02009nam a22002297a 4500 20241230121007.0 241230b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d 9781478030713 : International Book Distributors : Flat No.- 17, Prakash Apartment, 4405/2,5 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi : 121072 ; 17/12/2024 954.14 BHA Bhattacharya, Tithi. Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence : A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal. / Tithi Bhattacharya. , London : Duke University Press , 2024. xi, 213p. : 24cm. 1645 In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence, Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and ghost stories played in constituting the modern Indian nation, and the religious ideas seeded therein, as it emerged in dialogue with European science. Bhattacharya introduces readers to the multifarious habits and personalities of Bengal’s traditional ghosts and investigates and mourns their eventual extermination. For Bhattacharya, British colonization marked a transition from the older, multifaith folk world of traditional ghosts to newer and more frightening specters. These "modern" Bengali ghosts, borne out of a new rationality, were homogeneous specters amenable to "scientific" speculation and invoked at séance sessions in elite drawing rooms. Reading literature alongside the colonial archive, Bhattacharya uncovers a new reordering of science and faith from the middle of the nineteenth century. She argues that these shifts cemented the authority of a rising upper-caste colonial elite who expelled the older ghosts in order to recast Hinduism as the conscience of the Indian nation. In so doing, Bhattacharya reveals how capitalism necessarily reshaped Bengal as part of the global colonial project. Ghost stories Multifarious habits Colonial archive Tithi Bhattacharya BOOK 62647 62647 0 0 ddc 0 0 SNUL SNUL 2024-12-30 International Book Distributors 1645.00 1 1 954.14 BHA 30549 2025-12-15 16:20:52 2025-11-19 2024-12-30 BOOK