000 01672cam a2200181 i 4500
020 _a9781138106161
082 _a202.18
_bSWA/I
100 1 _aSwagato Ganguly
245 1 0 _aIdolatry and the colonial idea of India :visions of horror, allegories of enlightenment
260 _aLondon
_bRoutledge
_c2018
300 _a208p.
490 0 _aSouth Asian history & culture
520 _aThis book explores literary and scholarly representations of India from the 18th to the early 20th centuries in South Asia and the West with idolatry as a point of entry. It charts the intellectual horizon within which the colonial idea of India was framed, tracing sources and genealogies which inform even contemporary descriptions of the subcontinent. Using idolatry as a concept-metaphor, the book traverses an ambitious path through the works of William Jones, James Mill, Friedrich Max Müller, John Ruskin, Alice Perrin, E. M. Forster, Rammohan Roy and Bankimchandra Chatterjee. It reveals how religion and paganism, history and literature, Oriental thought and Western metaphysics, and social reform and education were unfolded and debated by them. The author underlines how idolatry, irrationality and social disorder came to be linked by discourses informed by Enlightenment, missionary rhetoric and colonial reason. This book will appeal to scholars and researchers in history, anthropology, literature, culture studies, philosophy, religion, sociology and South Asian studies as well as anyone interested in colonial studies and histories of the Enlightenment.
650 0 _aIdolatry
650 0 _aIdolatry in literature.
650 0 _aIndic literature
942 _cBK
999 _c59624
_d59624