Visions of greater India : transimperial knowledge and anti-colonial nationalism, c.1800-1960 / Yorim Spoelder.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Spoelder, Yorim, 1987- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

India--Study and teaching.

India.

Greater India Society.

Orientalism--India--History.

Orientalism.

Anti-imperialist movements--India--History.

Anti-imperialist movements.

Nationalism--India--History.

Nationalism.

India--Intellectual life--19th century.

India--Intellectual life--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xiii, 331 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York, NY : Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Summary:

'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.

Contents:

Introduction : looking for India in Asia

Shifting horizons : Buddhist archaeology and the quest for Serindia

Finding India in Southeast Asia : early Indocentric approaches

Transimperial knowledge networks and the research paradigm of greater India

British India and the quest for a new orientalism : the Greater India Society

'Colonial art' and the reconfiguration of aesthetic space

Epilogue : the knowledge networks of greater India in the postcolonial era

Connecting orientalism and internationalism : Tagore, Indian Asianism and the historical imagination

Disawoving Indian exceptionalism : Sarkar, 'modern greater India' and the Hindu nationalist imagination

A new Nalanda in Bolpur : Visva-Bharati and the quest for a global humanism

Conclusion : greater India as a political discourse in the interwar period.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 13 Nov 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009403177 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.