Orientalism The Construction Of Race And The Politics Of Identity In British India 1800 1930

This book uncovers practices surrounding acts of collecting, surveying, and antiquarianism during British colonial rule in India. By examining these practices, this book traces the colonial conditions of the production of 'sources,' the forging of a new historical method, and the ascendance of positivist historiography in nineteenth-century India.

This book was shortlisted for the ESSE Junior Scholars book award for Cultural Studies in English, 2012 Since its inception cinema has served as a powerful medium that both articulates and intervenes in visions of identity. The experiences of British colonialism in Ireland and India are marked by many commonalities, not least in terms of colonial and indigenous imaginings of the relationships between colony or former colony and imperial metropolis. Cinematic representations of Ireland and India display several parallels in their expressions and contestations of visions of Empire and national identity. This book offers a critical approach to the study of Ireland's colonial and postcolonial heritage through a comparative exploration of such filmic visions, yielding insights into the operations of colonial, nationalist and postcolonial discourse. Drawing on postcolonial and cultural theory and employing Bakhtin's concept of dialogism, the author engages in close readings of a broad range of metropolitan and indigenous films spanning an approximately fifty-year period, exploring the complex relationships between cinema, colonialism, nationalism and postcolonialism and examining their role in the (re)construction of Irish and Indian identities.

This book explores how and why Scottish Highlanders, Punjabi Sikhs, and Nepalese Gurkhas became identified as the British Empire's fiercest soldiers in nineteenth century discourse. As "martial races" these men were believed to possess a biological or cultural disposition to the racial and masculine qualities necessary for the arts of war. Because of this, they were used as icons to promote recruitment in British and Indian armies--a phenomenon with important social and political effects in India, in Britain, and in the armies of the Empire.

Many Hindus today are urban middle-class people with religious values similar to those of their professional counterparts in America and Europe. Just as modern professionals continue to build new churches, synagogues, and now mosques, Hindus are erecting temples to their gods wherever their work and their lives take them. Despite the perceived exoticism of Hindu worship, the daily life-style of these avid temple patrons differs little from their suburban neighbors. Joanne Waghorne leads her readers on a journey through this new middle-class Hindu diaspora, focusing on their efforts to build and support places of worship. She seeks to trace the changing religious sensibilities of the middle classes as written on their temples and on the faces of their gods. She offers detailed comparisons of temples in Chennai (formerly Madras), London, and Washington, D.C., and interviews temple priests, devotees, and patrons. In the process, she illuminates the interrelationships between ritual worship and religious edifices, the rise of the modern world economy, and the ascendancy of the great middle class. The result is a comprehensive portrait of Hinduism as lived today by so many both in India and throughout the world. Lavishly illustrated with professional photographs by Dick Waghorne, this book will appeal to art historians as well as urban anthropologists, scholars of religion, and those interested in diaspora, transnationalism, and trends in contemporary religion. It should be especially appealing for course use because it introduces the modern Hinduism practiced by the friends and neighbors of students in the U.S. and Britain.