000			02624nam a22002177a 4500
005			20250311144928.0
008			250311b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
028			_a: Donated by Prof. B.D. Chattopadhyaya ( Sudeshna Guha) _b: Kolkata
082			_a954.01 CHA
100			_aChakrabarti, Dilip K.
245			_aColonial Indology. _c/ Dilip K. Chakrabarti.
260			_aNew Delhi _b: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers _c , 1997.
300			_axi, 257p. _c: 24cm.
365			_b00
520			_aThis book explores some underlying theoretical premises of the Western study of ancient India. These premises developed in response to the colonial need to manipulate the Indians' perception of their past. The need was felt most strongly from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, and an elaborate racist framework, in which the interrelationship between race, language and culture was a key element, slowly emerged as an explanation of the ancient Indian historical universe. The measure of its success is obvious from the fact that the Indian nationalist historians left this framework unchallenged, preferring to dispute it only in some comparatively minor matters of detail. This book argues that this framework is still in place, and implicitly accepted not merely by Western Indologists but also by their Indian counterparts. The image of the ancient Indian past remains the same. The persistence of the old image is reflective of India's relationship as a part of the Third World with the West and Western historical scholarship. This book has a further argument. Mere dismantling of the current racist structure of our perception of ancient India and all that implies will not lead by itself to an Indian perception of the ancient Indian past. Besides, any alternative sense of this past should be something in which all Indians, irrespective of their individual affiliations, can feel having a share. Among other things, the book underlines the total inadequacy of ancient Indian texts to offer fine resolution historical images in chronological and geographical order, and argues that this goal is unlikely to be achieved by combining our historical texts with some social science theories. This can be achieved only through detailed grassroots investigations of the ancient history of the land and its interrelations with human beings. The academic context of the book lies in an increasingly expanding area of archaeological studies of the sociopolitics of the past.
650			_aIndology
650			_a Colonial Indology
650			_aAncient India
700			_aDilip K. Chakrabarti
942			_cBOOK
999			_c62918 _d62918