Imperial Encounters

Religion and Modernity in India and Britain
Erscheinungsjahr 2001
ISBN: 978-0-691-07478-8
Verlag: Princeton University Press

Buch, Englisch, 216 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 376 g

Picking up on Edward Said's claim that the historical experience of empire is common to both the colonizer and the colonized, Peter van der Veer takes the case of religion to examine the mutual impact of Britain's colonization of India on Indian and British culture. He shows that national culture in both India and Britain developed in relation to their shared colonial experience and that notions of religion and secularity were crucial in imagining the modern nation in both countries. In the process, van der Veer chronicles how these notions developed in the second half of the nineteenth century in relation to gender, race, language, spirituality, and science. Avoiding the pitfalls of both world systems theory and national historiography, this book problematizes oppositions between modern and traditional, secular and religious, progressive and reactionary. It shows that what often are assumed to be opposites are, in fact, profoundly entangled. In doing so, it upsets the convenient fiction that India is the land of eternal religion, existing outside of history, while Britain is the epitome of modern secularity and an agent of history. Van der Veer also accounts for the continuing role of religion in British culture and the strong part religion has played in the development of Indian civil society. This masterly work of scholarship brings into view the effects of the very close encounter between India and Britain--an intimate encounter that defined the character of both nations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Veer, Peter van der

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Internationale Beziehungen Kolonialismus, Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kolonialgeschichte, Geschichte des Imperialismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments ix

INTRODUCTION 3
CHAPTER ONE Secularity and Religion 14

The Separation of Church and State 16

Religion 24

Concluding Remarks 28
CHAPTER TWO The Moral State: Religion, Nation, and Empire 30

The Moral State in Britain 34

The Colonial Mission in India 41

Concluding Remarks 53
CHAPTER THREE The Spirits of the Age: Spiritualism and Political Radicalism 55

British Spirits 58

India's Spiritual Heritage 66

Concluding Remarks 77
CHAPTER FOUR Moral Muscle: Masculinity and Its Religious Uses 83

Muscular Christianity 85

Hindustani Honor 94

The Internal Enemy 101

Concluding Remarks 104
CHAPTER FIVE Monumental Texts: Orientalism and the Critical Edition of India's National Heritage 106

M?ller's Science 107

India's Adoption of German Wissenschaft 116

Texts and the Nationalist Imaginaire 122

Speaking, Writing, Watching 129

Concluding Remarks 131
CHAPTER SIX Aryan Origins 134

The Aryan Myth 136

From Language to Skulls 144

Race, Class and Criminality 150

Concluding Remarks 155
Conclusion 158

Notes 161

Bibliography 179

Index 191