ABSTRACT
This book sheds new light on the dynamics of the colonial encounter between Britain and India. It highlights how various analytical approaches to this encounter can be creatively mobilised to rethink entanglements of memory and identity emerging from British rule in the subcontinent. This volume reevaluates central, long-standing debates about the historical impact of the British Raj by deviating from hegemonic and top-down civilizational perspectives. It focuses on interactions, relations and underlying meanings of the colonial experience. The narratives of memory, identity and the legacy of the colonial encounter are woven together in a diverse range of essays on subjects such as colonial and nationalist memorials; British, Eurasian, Dalit and Adivasi identities; regional political configurations; and state initiatives and patterns of control.
By drawing on empirically rich, regional and chronological historical studies, this book will be essential reading for students and researchers of history, political science, colonial studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|147 pages
Memory and identity
section I|25 pages
Colonial memory
chapter 1|23 pages
Memory, place and British memorials in early Calcutta
section II|36 pages
Colonial identities
chapter 2|16 pages
On the political history of Britishness in India
section III|42 pages
Textual representations of memory and identity
chapter 5|22 pages
Paradoxes of victimhood
section IV|44 pages
Sites of memory and identity formation
chapter 6|18 pages
Sites of memory and structures of power in North India
chapter 7|25 pages
Dispossessing memory
part 2|143 pages
Colonial encounters
section I|36 pages
Encounters with regional governance
section II|35 pages
Encounters with surveillance and resistance
chapter 11|16 pages
From London to Calcutta
section III|72 pages
Encounters and ‘improvement’