Colonial histories of India were largely monologues. From the turn of the nineteenth century, Indians began to ‘talk back’, questioning colonial assumptions and narratives of India’s past. This book examines the point of this endeavour, what Indians said when they began to talk back, and the discourse of civilization. This rhetoric took many forms: from the defence of Indian civilization, the tendency towards vainglorious depiction of ‘Hindu civilization’, and the assertion of civilizational unity in the distant past to creating a surrogate for nationhood. This book examines this discourse in ... More

Colonial histories of India were largely monologues. From the turn of the nineteenth century, Indians began to ‘talk back’, questioning colonial assumptions and narratives of India’s past. This book examines the point of this endeavour, what Indians said when they began to talk back, and the discourse of civilization. This rhetoric took many forms: from the defence of Indian civilization, the tendency towards vainglorious depiction of ‘Hindu civilization’, and the assertion of civilizational unity in the distant past to creating a surrogate for nationhood. This book examines this discourse in the works of R.G. Bhandarkar and Bankimchandra Chatterjee and explores the evolution of the idea of civilization in the writings of luminaries like Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, and Jawaharlal Nehru.