Culture, Ideology, Hegemony: Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India

This volume explores the interconnections between culture, ideology and hegemony, in an effort to understand and explain how Indians, under colonial subjection, came to terms with their past and present, and thus envisioned a future for the society they lived in. The process of exploring the indigenous epistemological tradition and assessing it in the context of a advances made by the west, was not unilinear and undifferentiated; it was riven with contradictions, contentions and ruptures. Locating intellectual history at the intersection of social and cultural history, the eight essays in the book cover a wide range of issues, moving from an overview of religious and social ideas in colonial India to empirical studies of themes like indigenous medicine, the family and literary fiction. Professor Panikkar contests both the imperialist and nationalist paradigms of intellectual history. His analysis is illumined by a rare sensitivity to the nature of class formation and class values, as well as to the material conditions of human existence. Meticulously researched and lucidly argued, the book is significant for the theoretical and methodological engagements it offers.