Colonial Indology

Colonial Indology
Author: Dilip K. Chakrabarti
Publisher:
Total Pages: 282
Release: 1997
Genre: History
ISBN:

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Description: This book explores some underlying theoretical premises of the Western study of ancient India. These premises developed in response to the colonial need to manipulate the Indians' perception of their past. The need was felt most strongly from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, and an elaborate racist framework, in which the interrelationship between race, language and culture was a key element, slowly emerged as an explanation of the ancient Indian historical universe. The measure of its success is obvious from the fact that the Indian nationalist historians left this framework unchallenged, preferring to dispute it only in some comparatively minor matters of detail. This book argues that this framework is still in place, and implicitly accepted not merely by Western Indologists but also by their Indian counterparts. The image of the ancient Indian past remains the same. The persistence of the old image is reflective of India's relationship as a part of the Third World with the West and Western historical scholarship. This book has a further argument. Mere dismantling of the current racist structure of our perception of ancient India and all that implies will not lead by itself to an Indian perception of the ancient Indian past. Besides, any alternative sense of this past should be something in which all Indians, irrespective of their individual affiliations, can feel having a share. Among other things, the book underlines the total inadequacy of ancient Indian texts to offer fine resolution historical images in chronological and geographical order, and argues that this goal is unlikely to be achieved by combining our historical texts with some social science theories. This can be achieved only through detailed grassroots investigations of the ancient history of the land and its interrelations with human beings. The academic context of the book lies in an increasingly expanding area of archaeological studies of the sociopolitics of the past. This is the first major exercise in this direction in the context of India.

The Making of Western Indology

The Making of Western Indology
Author: Rosane Rocher
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2014-06-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317579178

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Drawing on new sources, this book evaluates the importance of Henry Thomas Colebrooke, an East India Company civil servant who became the father of modern Indology. Written by renowned academics in the field of Indology, and drawing on new sources, this book shows how he embodies the significant passage from eighteenth century colonial expansion, to the professional, transnational ethos of nineteenth century intellectual life and scholarly enquiry.

Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism

Indology, Indomania, and Orientalism
Author: Douglas T. McGetchin
Publisher: Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press
Total Pages: 293
Release: 2009
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 083864208X

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He has presented more than a dozen papers at academic conferences in North America, Europe, and South Asia, including Harvard University, Humboldt University, Heidelberg University's South Asia Institute, and the Max Mueller Bhavan in New Delhi, India.

The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism

The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism
Author: Baijayanti Roy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2024-09-09
Genre: History
ISBN: 0192887556

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The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism is the first detailed and critical study of the intellectual and political connections that existed between some German scholars specializing on India, non-academic 'India experts,' Indian anti-colonialists and various organs of the Nazi state. It explores the ways in which different knowledge discourses pertaining to India, particularly its colonization and the anti-colonial movement, were used by these individuals for a number of German organisations to fulfil the demands of Nazi politics. This monograph also inspects the links between the knowledge providers and embodiments of National Socialist politics like the Nazi party and its affiliates. In this study, Baijayanti Roy aims to ascertain whether such political engagements were actually more rewarding for the scholars than their 'practical services' to the state in the form of strategic deployment of their knowledge of India. The Nazi Study of India and Indian Anti-Colonialism offers case studies of four organisations which incorporated such complicated entanglements of knowledge and power: the India Institute of the Deutsche Akademie in Munich, the Special Department India of the German Foreign Ministry, the Seminar for Oriental languages and its successor institutions at the University of Berlin, and the Indian Legion of the German Army. The knowledge networks underlying these organisations were dominated by German Indologists, but non-specialist knowledge providers, both German and Indian were also included. The Nazi regime expected all scholars and intellectuals to engage in Kulturpolitik (cultural politics), which entailed propagating the glories of the 'Reich' and its supreme leader as well as collecting 'politically valuable' knowledge within and outside Germany. For the four organizations concerned, this meant conducting pro-German and from around 1938, anti-British propaganda aimed at Indians. Loosely following an analogy provided by Herbert Mehrtens in the context of natural sciences, this monograph posits that there were 'patterns of collaboration' between the knowledge providers and the representatives of the Nazi regime. At the core of these 'patterns' was, to borrow Mitchell Ash`s theory, an exchange of resources and capital in which scholars and experts offered their knowledge of Indian languages, history and culture to authorities like the Foreign Ministry, the SS and the Army. In return, they received increased professional opportunities, financial remuneration or in some cases, increased power and influence.

Handbook of Postcolonial Archaeology

Handbook of Postcolonial Archaeology
Author: Jane Lydon
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 526
Release: 2016-07
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1315427680

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The contributors to this volume—themselves from six continents and many representing indigenous and minority communities and disadvantaged countries—suggest strategies to strip archaeological theory and practice of its colonial heritage and create a discipline sensitive to its inherent inequalities.

Visions of Greater India

Visions of Greater India
Author: Yorim Spoelder
Publisher:
Total Pages: 348
Release: 2023-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 1009403184

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'Greater India' was a transimperial, Indocentric research paradigm that informed the colonial recovery of the ancient past in Central and Southeast Asia. Ancient India was postulated as the fount of an expansive classicism - an actor in world history on a par with ancient Greece and Rome. Under the Greater India movement, the scholarly quest for 'India in Asia' became tied to anti-colonial, pedagogical, nationalist and Asianist agendas. Yet although it provided a potent anti-colonial imaginary, the movement also bolstered visions of Indian exceptionalism and energized Hindu nationalist ideas of India as a civilizing, colonizing power. Speaking directly to debates that define and divide India today, this is essential reading for those interested in the legacies of Orientalist scholarship and interwar visions of Indian internationalism. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander

Non-Jonesian Indology and Alexander
Author: Ranajit Pal
Publisher: Virago Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2002
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9788176620321

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Ranjit Pal`S Work Is At Once Fascinatingly Suggestive, Pioneering And Provocative, Yet Frustratingly Confused And Laborious. The Main Subject Is Alexander`S Conquest Of India, Specifically Palibothra, The Theoretical Limit Of His March East. The Author Leads His Own Campaign West Against Those Scholars, Particularly Badian And His Disciples Who Ignore The Sanskrit And Pali Sources And Try To Reconstruct Alexander`S Eastern Campaign Using Only The Greek And Roman Texts.

The Shape of Ancient Thought

The Shape of Ancient Thought
Author: Thomas McEvilley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 1015
Release: 2012-02-07
Genre: Art
ISBN: 1581159331

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Spanning thirty years of intensive research, this book proves what many scholars could not explain: that today’s Western world must be considered the product of both Greek and Indian thought—Western and Eastern philosophies. Thomas McEvilley explores how trade, imperialism, and migration currents allowed cultural philosophies to intermingle freely throughout India, Egypt, Greece, and the ancient Near East. This groundbreaking reference will stir relentless debate among philosophers, art historians, and students.

Women and Literary Narratives in Colonial India

Women and Literary Narratives in Colonial India
Author: Sukla Chatterjee
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2018-10-03
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 042994439X

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In the colonial context of South Asia, there is a glaring asymmetry in the written records of the interaction between the Bengali women and their European counterparts, which is indicative of the larger and the overall asymmetry of discursive power, including the flow and access to information between the colonizers and their subjects. This book explores the idea of gazing through literature in Colonial India. Based on literary and historical analysis, it focuses on four different genres of literary writing where nineteenth-century Bengali women writers look back at the British colonizers. In the process, the European culture becomes a static point of reference, and the chapters in the book show the ideological, social, cultural, political, and deeper, emotional interactions between the colonized and the colonizer. The book also addresses the lack of sufficient primary sources authored by Bengali women on their European counterparts by anthologizing different available genres. Taking into account literary narratives from the colonized and the less represented side of the divide, such as a travelogue, fantasy fiction, missionary text and journal articles, the book represents the varying opinions and perspectives vis-à-vis the European women. Using an interdisciplinary approach charting the fields of Indology, colonial studies, sociology, literature/literary historiography, South-Asian feminism, and cultural studies, this book makes an important contribution to the field of South Asian Studies, studies of empire, and to Indian women’s literary history.