ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the resemblances between Jadunath Sarkar and similar figures in New Zealand history, picking as her prime example Sir Apirana Ngata, whose adoption of historicist and progressive methods was repeatedly interrupted by his pride in a “persistent Maori historicity.” It is concerned not only with the formal academic arenas and arguments and certified intellectual sites and scenes, but equally follows the career of Provincializing Europe into everyday nooks and quotidian corners. The book shows that “Chakrabarty left both ‘culture’ and ‘consciousness’ [as] inadequately defined and conceptually under-developed,” such that tendentious readings of the work persist into the present. It addresses the issue of why the coercive side of colonialism is often under-enunciated in Indian narratives, specifically, the reasons for Indian historians frequently recoiling from engagements with the terms of race and racism.
