Knowing India: Colonial and Modern Constructions of the Past

Description

Knowing India honors the contributions of Thomas R. Trautmann to the fields of anthropology and history by presenting research from leading scholars who are his contemporaries, colleagues, and former students. Divided into four sections, the 17 essays in this volume look at modes of conceptualizing and classifying traditional South Asian society, perceptions of the precolonial past in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and aspects of precolonial India’s historical development and writing. Contributors include reputed contemporaries of Trautmann such as Madhav Deshpande, David Lorenzen, Romila Thapar, and Sylvia Vatuk, as well as former students like Shah Mahmoud Hanifi, Bhavani Raman, and Parna Sengupta who engage with and take off from questions raised by Trautmann. Also containing essays by Michael Dodson, Kenneth Hall, Anne Hardgrove, Judith Irvine, Carla Sinopoli, and Cynthia Talbot, the book ends with three tributes to Trautmann by Tom Fricke, Richard H. Davis and Rama Mantena.