How does the Western world imagine India? How far are commonly held suppositions about the nature and character of the Indian sub-continent dictated by distortions perpetuated by generations of writers in a wide variety of disciplines? In this book Ronald Inden offers a critique of the presuppositions behind the discourses which have claimed to reveal the truth about India. He shows how a succession of writers - not only Indologists but also scholars in such fields as religion, anthropology, economics and political philosophy - have built upon the misconceptions of their predecessors and have used such misconceptions to bolster Western self-perceptions. European scholars and their doubles, the colonial administrators and traders, assumed for themselves the power to know the hidden essences of the country and to act upon them, thereby sustaining the West's image of itself as the epitome of the modern.
- ISBN10 0631169237
- ISBN13 9780631169239
- Publish Date 24 May 1990
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 20 March 1998
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher John Wiley and Sons Ltd
- Imprint Blackwell Publishers
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 320
- Language English