Honesty is the best policy. So, let us begin with a confession: the task before us was almost impossible. Imagine trying to bottle thousands of years of philosophy, countless interpretations, sacred traditions and spiritual wisdom into a tiny bottle or in this case, finite pages of a coffee-table book.
That was the challenge when the Hindu Mandir in Montreal commissioned Maneesh Media to create Sanatana Dharma – The Divinity of Hinduism to commemorate its 25th anniversary.
We were not simply putting together a book about Hinduism. We were attempting to give an extraordinarily vast subject a coherent narrative, an accessible language and a visual identity worthy of its depth.
The Challenge of Where to Begin?
When telling a story, it helps to have a chronology. But how does one find that in something as deep, diverse, and expansive like Sanatana Dharma?
We knew we had to find a starting point and unlike a conventional biography, we did not have exact dates, times to rely on. The editorial challenge was to identify a meaningful progression through the subject without suggesting that one interpretation could represent its entirety. The Vedas, Upanishads and Bhagavad Gita provided essential philosophical reference points. Deities, festivals and spiritual practices offered opportunities to connect abstract ideas with familiar experiences.
The Challenge of Making Every Page Count
A coffee-table book operates under an interesting constraint. It must be visually compelling, yet its pages cannot become a gallery of beautiful images accompanied by superficial explanations.
With this book, every visual choice needed to support the narrative. Religious iconography carries layers of symbolism. Festivals embody histories, beliefs and cultural practices. Philosophical concepts demand careful explanation.
The challenge was to bring these elements together so that the imagery encouraged curiosity and the text rewarded it.
Too much information would overwhelm the reader. Too little would diminish the subject.
Finding the balance between visual richness and intellectual substance became central to the book’s editorial approach.
The Challenge of Appealing to Multiple Generations
The publication was being created for a temple community in Montreal, making its potential readership particularly interesting. Some readers would have grown up surrounded by Hindu traditions. Others might have encountered them primarily through festivals, family rituals and occasional temple visits. The same pages therefore needed to speak to readers with vastly different levels of familiarity. This called for clarity without oversimplification, reverence without excessive formality, and explanations that invited discovery rather than presumed knowledge. It was an exercise in making a complex subject approachable while respecting its diversity.
The Challenge of Knowing We Have Done Our Best
Perhaps the hardest editorial decision in a project of this nature is accepting that completeness is impossible. There will always be another interpretation, another tradition, another philosophical question deserving attention. But publishing requires choices. A book needs boundaries, even when its subject has none.
For Maneesh Media, Sanatana Dharma – The Divinity of Hinduism was an exercise in editorial restraint as much as creative ambition: determining what to include, how to organise it and how to make each page contribute to a larger understanding.
The finished publication commemorated 25 years of the Hindu Mandir in Montreal while introducing readers to a spiritual inheritance spanning millennia.