Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India

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.

Table of Contents:
PART I: PRODUCING COLONIAL KNOWLEDGE * What's in a (Proper) Name? Particulars, Individuals and Authorship in the Linguistic Survey of India and Colonial Scholarship - Javed Majeed * The Floating Lexicon: Hobson-Jobson and the OED - Kate Teltscher * Missions and Museums: Hindu Gods and Other "Abominations," 1820-1860 - Geoffrey Oddie * Antiquarian Knowledge and Preservation of Indian Monuments at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century - Ann Julie Etter * PART II: HISTORICAL PLACES, HISTORICAL PASTS * Landscapes of the Past: Rajatarangini and Historical Knowledge Production in Late-Nineteenth-Century Kashmir - Chitralekha Zutshi * Jaunpur, Ruination, and Conservation during the Colonial Era - Michael Dodson * The Qutb Minar in Sayyid Ahmad Khan's Asar us-?anadid - David Lelyveld * PART III: PEDAGOGY AND TRANSFORMATION * Promoting Scientism: Institutions for Gathering and Disseminating Knowledge in British Bihar - Peter Gottschalk * Old Books in New Bindings: Ethics and Education in Colonial India - Avril Powell * Teaching Emotions. Victorian Values and Sharafat in Nineteenth-century Delhi - Margrit Pernau

About the Author :
Indra Sengupta is a Research Fellow in British Empire and Commonwealth History at the German Historical Institute London. Her research interests include the production of knowledge on India in colonial India and Europe, especially German Orientalism, and monument-making practices in colonial India. Her current research is on monument-making in colonial India in colonial and metropolitan perspectives. She is the author of From Salon to Discipline: State, University and Indology in Germany, 1821-1914 (2005). Daud Ali is a Senior Lecturer in Indian History at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London. His area of specialization is early medieval Indian history. He is author of Courtly Culture and Political Life in Early Medieval India (2004). He has also co-authored, with Ronald Inden and Jonathan Walters, Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practice in South Asia (2000), and edited Invoking the Past: the Uses of History in South Asia (1999).