Visions Of Greater India

'Greater India' was a transimperial, Indocentric research paradigm that informed the colonial recovery of the ancient past in Central and Southeast Asia. Ancient India was postulated as the fount of an expansive classicism – an actor in world history on a par with ancient Greece and Rome. Under the Greater India movement, the scholarly quest for 'India in Asia' became tied to anti-colonial, pedagogical, nationalist and Asianist agendas. Yet although it provided a potent anti-colonial imaginary, the movement also bolstered visions of Indian exceptionalism and energized Hindu nationalist ideas of India as a civilizing, colonizing power. Speaking directly to debates that define and divide India today, this is essential reading for those interested in the legacies of Orientalist scholarship and interwar visions of Indian internationalism. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

'Greater India' was a transimperial, Indocentric research paradigm that informed the colonial recovery of the ancient past in Central and Southeast Asia. Ancient India was postulated as the fount of an expansive classicism - an actor in world history on a par with ancient Greece and Rome. Under the Greater India movement, the scholarly quest for 'India in Asia' became tied to anti-colonial, pedagogical, nationalist and Asianist agendas. Yet although it provided a potent anti-colonial imaginary, the movement also bolstered visions of Indian exceptionalism and energized Hindu nationalist ideas of India as a civilizing, colonizing power. Speaking directly to debates that define and divide India today, this is essential reading for those interested in the legacies of Orientalist scholarship and interwar visions of Indian internationalism. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Description: The concept of a world-community where a nation's interest is to be subordinated to the general welfare of the mankind has, of late, been driven home by the UNO. It may be puzzling novelty to pronounce that this gospel of the UNO has been a time-honoured facet of India's foreign policy in the distant past. Thus while the west stood for my country, right or wrong. India forged ahead to harness permanent benefits for the universe. No wonder, the umbrella of Indian cultural influence got inside it far-flung lands and islands both in the east and the west that came to be rightly named Greater India. India has been the king-pin in this cultural knot. A large number of standard books in French and Dutch languages held the field to begin with. Works in English came rather late. There has always been the need for a quick survey of the entire subject in a brief compass and within an easy reach. The present study is rather a gamut that couches the entire field and material in a systematic, easy and balanced historical narration to cater to the needs of the students and the general readers alike.

Contemporary Asian societies present a variety of contrasting experiences and afterlives of colonialism, revolutionary socialism, religion and secular nationalism. Asian Lives in Anthropological Perspective draws together essays that demonstrate how modernity has shaped two Asian settings in particular – India and Vietnam. It traces historical and contemporary realities through a variety of compelling topics such as the experience of the Indian caste system and the ethical challenges faced by Vietnamese working women.

On cultural and social conditions in India at the beginning of the 20th century; based on a brief visit.