Knowledge Production Pedagogy And Institutions In Colonial India

This volume seeks to revise the Saidian analytical framework which dominated research on the subject of colonial knowledge for almost two decades, which emphasized colonial knowledge as a series of representations of colonial hegemony. It seeks to contribute to research in the field by analyzing knowledge in colonial India as a dynamic process.

"This volume seeks to radically revise the Saidian analytical framework which dominated research on the subject of colonial knowledge for almost two decades, which emphasized colonial knowledge as a series of representations of colonial hegemony. It seeks to contribute substantially to research in the field by analyzing knowledge in colonial India as a dynamic process, produced in historically specific, and changing, social and intellectual contexts, and as an essentially unstable, fractured and contingent set of ideas and practices, produced in unpredictable and often self-contradictory ways for different audiences. It also focuses on the very important and neglected questions of indigenous agency in producing knowledge in colonial India and the related problem of knowledge dissemination and transmission"--Provided by publisher.

This book is the first detailed examination of George Abraham Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, one of the most complete sources on South Asian languages. It shows that the Survey was characterised by a composite and collaborative mode of producing knowledge, which undermines any clear distinctions between European orientalists and colonised Indians in British India. Its authority lay more in its stress on the provisional nature of its findings, an emphasis on the approximate nature of its results, and a strong sense of its own shortcomings and inadequacies, rather than in any expression of mastery over India’s languages. The book argues that the Survey brings to light a different kind of colonial knowledge, whose relationship to power was much more ambiguous than has hitherto been assumed for colonial projects in modern India. It also highlights the contribution of Indians to the creation of colonial knowledge about South Asia as a linguistic region. Indians were important collaborators and participants in the Survey, and they helped to create the monumental knowledge of India as a linguistic region which is embodied in the Survey. This volume, like its companion volume Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, will be a great resource for scholars and researchers of linguistics, language and literature, history, political studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies.

Working-Class Raj explores what happened to working-class men and women when they left Britain and travelled to India, where their worlds were upended by the disruptive addition of race to British social hierarchies. Drawing on previously unused correspondence collections, this book puts British working-class history in a global perspective.

This book investigates what has constituted notions of "archaeological heritage" from colonial times to the present. It includes case studies of sites in South and Southeast Asia with a special focus on Angkor, Cambodia. The contributions, the subjects of which range from architectural and intellectual history to historic preservation and restoration, evaluate historical processes spanning two centuries which saw the imagination and production of "dead archaeological ruins" by often overlooking living local, social, and ritual forms of usage on site. Case studies from computational modelling in archaeology discuss a comparable paradigmatic change from a mere simulation of supposedly dead archaeological building material to an increasing appreciation and scientific incorporation of the knowledge of local stakeholders. This book seeks to bring these different approaches from the humanities and engineering sciences into a trans-disciplinary discussion.

This book explores the localisation of modernity in late colonial India. As a case study, it focuses on the hitherto untold colonial history of Khalsa College, Amritsar, a pioneering and highly influential educational institution founded in the British Indian province of Punjab in 1892 by the religious minority community of the Sikhs. Addressing topics such as politics, religion, rural development, militarism or physical education, the study shows how Sikh educationalists and activists made use of and ‘localised’ communal, imperial, national and transnational discourses and knowledge. Their modernist visions and schemes transcended both imperialist and mainstream nationalist frameworks and networks. In its quest to educate the modern Sikh – scientific, practical, disciplined and physically fit – the college navigated between very local and global claims, opportunities and contingencies, mirroring modernity’s ambivalent simultaneity of universalism and particularism.

This volume cross-examines the stability of heritage as a concept. It interrogates the past which materialises through multi-layered narratives on monuments and other objects that sustain cultural diversity. It seeks to understand how interpretations of “monuments” as “texts” are affected at the local level of experience, even as institutions such as UNESCO work to globalise and fix constructs of stable and universal heritage. Shifting away from a largely Eurocentric concept associated with architecture and monumental archaeology, this book reassesses how local and regional heritage needs to be balanced with the global and transnational. It argues that material objects and monuments are not static embodiments of culture but are, rather, a medium through which identity, power and society are produced and reproduced. This is especially relevant in South and Southeast Asian contexts, where debates over heritage often have local, regional and national political implications and consequences. Reevaluating how traditional valuation of monuments and cultural landscapes could help aid sustainability and long-term preservation of the heritage, this book will be useful for scholars and researchers of South and Southeast Asian history, heritage studies, archaeology, cultural studies, tourism studies and political history as well.

This handbook is a comprehensive study of the archaeology, social history and the cultural landscape of the Hindu temple. Perhaps the most recognizable of the material forms of Hinduism, temples are lived, dynamic spaces. They are significant sites for the creation of cultural heritage, both in the past and in the present. Drawing on historiographical surveys and in-depth case studies, the volume centres the material form of the Hindu temple as an entry point to study its many adaptations and transformations from the early centuries CE to the 20th century. It highlights the vibrancy and dynamism of the shrine in different locales and studies the active participation of the community for its establishment, maintenance and survival. The illustrated handbook takes a unique approach by focusing on the social base of the temple rather than its aesthetics or chronological linear development. It fills a significant gap in the study of Hinduism and will be an indispensable resource for scholars of archaeology, Hinduism, Indian history, religious studies, museum studies, South Asian history and Southeast Asian history. Chapters 1, 4 and 5 of this book are available for free in PDF format as Open Access from the individual product page at www.routledge.com. They have been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.