Beyond Representation Colonial and Postcolonial Constructions of Indian Identity

by Bates, Crispin

• ISBN13: 9780195674972
• ISBN10: 0195674979
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2006-04-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• More Book Details
• Purchase Benefits

Summary

The volume explores how the British rule and colonial constructions of identity affected the Indians. It studies the impact of colonialism on Indian identity from the point of view that emphasizes disjunctures as much as continuities. It also steps beyond this paradigm by airing a cross section of new and original research that examines the agency of Indians themselves in the process of identity formation and dialogical nature of Indian cultures.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements	vii
Introduction	1	(18)
Crispin Bates
Human Sacrifice in Colonial Central India: Myth, Agency, and Representation	19	(36)
Crispin Bates
Governmentality, Pedagogy, Identity: The Problem of the `Backward Muslim' in Colonial India	55	(22)
Sanjay Seth
Subverting the Moral Universe: `Narratives of Transgression' in the Construction of Middle-class Identity in Colonial Bengal	77	(23)
Swapna M. Banerjee
The Icon of Mother in Late Colonial North India: Bharat Mata, Matri Bhasha, and Gau Mata	100	(23)
Charu Gupta
Battling the Demoness Hindi in Tamil India	123	(28)
Sumathi Ramaswamy
Gujarati Elites and the Construction of a Regional Identity in the Late Nineteenth Century	151	(26)
Riho Isaka
A World of Learning: The Material Culture of Education and Class in Nineteenth-century Bengal	177	(33)
Tithi Bhattacharya
Identities Made in Print: Literary Bengali and its `Others', c. 1800--1905	210	(31)
Anindita Ghosh
From Brahmacharya to `Conscious Race Culture': Victorian Discourses of `Science' and Hindu Traditions in Early Indian Nationalism	241	(29)
Harald Fischer-Tine
Between Suburb and World Politics: Middle-class Identities and the Refashioning of Space in Late Imperial Lahore, c. 1920--50	270	(30)
Markus Daechsel
Treason of the Clerks: Sedition and Representation in the Telegraph General Strike of 1908	300	(22)
Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury
The Chemistry of a Bengali Life: Acharya/Sir Prafulla Chandra Ray in his Times and Spaces	322	(31)
Benjamin Zachariah
`I Assert Myself as the Head of the Universe Government': Identities, Psychiatry, and a Swami in Postcolonial India	353	(16)
James H. Mills
Contributors	369