The Sentinels of Culture Class, Education, and the Colonial Intellectual in Bengal (1848-85)

by Bhattacharya, Tithi

• ISBN13: 9780195669107
• ISBN10: 019566910X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-05-12
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book is about the intellegentsia in nineteenth-century Bengal. It analyzes why--from the second half of the nineteenth century--the Hindu bhadralok in Bengal developed a specific rhetoric of culture that has continued to inform their identity to the present day.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	ix
List of Tables	xi
Glossary	xii
Introduction	1	(7)
Culture and Modernity: Raiding the Arsenal of the Postcolonial Theorist	8	(4)
The Long Shadow of the Bengal Renaissance	12	(13)
Ideology and Class	25	(5)
Ideology and Material Practice	30	(5)
The Curious Case of the Bhadralok: Class or Sentiment?	35	(33)
Rethinking the Bhadralok	36	(5)
The Merchants of Empire	41	(8)
From Byabsa to Chakri	49	(14)
The Associations of Power	63	(5)
Ideologies and Practices	68	(40)
Vidya: The Emergence of a Concept	70	(7)
Culture Strikes Back	77	(8)
Mobilizing Culture: Similitude and Difference	85	(12)
The Thorny Problem of Class	97	(11)
The Forms and Uses of Print	108	(45)
From Punthi to Print	110	(7)
Ways of Reading: Print and Orality	117	(5)
Lekha Para: Writing as a Social Category	122	(10)
Educating Print: Fonts, Compositions, and Typographic Errors	132	(7)
The Location of Print	139	(9)
The Avenues of Distribution and Sale	148	(5)
Education and its Necessary Virtues	153	(39)
Yielding Place to the New	154	(7)
The Attributes of Education	161	(6)
Gurumashai to Mastermashai	167	(6)
The Discriminating Metropolis	173	(11)
Mythologies of Democracy	184	(8)
Bewarish Bangla Bhasha: Language and its Guardians	192	(28)
The Word as Utterance	193	(4)
The Search for Sources	197	(4)
Laying the Foundations	201	(6)
Sadhu Versus Chalit: The Debate Over Form	207	(9)
Language and Class	216	(4)
Conclusion	220	(14)
Bibliography	234	(25)
Index	259