Emotions, senses, and the perception of the self

This chapter traces the importance of emotions in colonial India. Emotions were disciplined through the civilising mission, and its adaptation into self-civilisation, by the national and the different religious reform movements. The pre- and paracolonial knowledge and practices of not suppressing emotions but striving towards a balance remained important throughout the nineteenth century. The twentieth century saw an increasing desire for strong emotions, linked to the revival and revitalisation of the community and the nation. Rather than viewing these as three successive stages, the chapter suggests looking at ways in which they interacted.