ABSTRACT
The work of Mrinal Miri has entailed sustained considerations of modern thought and provided wideranging reflections on the phenomenon of modernity. Sudipta Kaviraj has sought to partially revise 'influential theories of modernity in Western social theory', especially their emphases on the homogeneity of the phenomenon concerning its causes and consequences, origin and trajectory. The terms of modernity as expressed in the work of science find form and assume substance in the productivity of power of colonialism and nationalism. Varieties of modern historical writing and thought-both of a hermeneutic provenance and, of course, of a more analytical, social-scientific bent-have no doubt accessed what Dipesh Chakrabarty speaks of as secular, empty, homogeneous time. Chakrabarty frames historicism as a pervasive mode of thinking and manner of knowing, which appears intimately implicated in social-scientific understandings and wider historical practice.
