Postcolonial Passages: Contemporary History-Writing on India

The past two decades have seen major departures in the writing of cultural history and historical anthropology of India. Today, such scholarship constitutes an integral part of transnational debates across disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences. Postcolonial Passages brings into mutual dialogue landmark writings on empire and modernity, state and nation, and colonial questions and postcolonial problems. The contributors to the volume are widely known for their critical engagements with dominant representations of the Indian subcontinent. In this collection, they not only explore in inherently plural ways colonial and postcolonial cultures and pasts, society and politics, but equally think through pervasive global and national divisions of knowledge and power at the beginning of the new millennium. Thus, Postcolonial Passages addresses anew contentious questions of historical representation and cultural understanding. In the book, the postcolonial does not imply a settled stage of history or an exclusive form of knowledge. Rather, it suggests a critical perspective, one that probes the contradictions and connections between the colonial state and the Indian nation, explores the conditions and prospects of modernity, and questions the projection of the west as history and destiny. This collection scrutinises vital issues–such as the linkages and tensions between modernity and its margins, empire and nation, colonialism and community, and nationalist transformations and sectarian violence–as representation and experience. Saurabh Dube’s critical introduction brings together the concerns of the eminent contributors by placing them in broad theoretical and historiographical contexts, and expresses the ambiguities and possibilities of the postcolonial as a category. Postcolonial Passages addresses issues that cut across disciplinary boundaries and are of immense importance in the contemporary world. As such, this significant collection will be invaluable to the reader interested in fresh perspectives on the Indian subcontinent and its multi-faceted history. In the classroom, especially in postgraduate courses, this wide-ranging reader shall provide a serious critical framework for understanding salient questions in the study of the past and the present.