Author Description

The essays in this volume help us understand the concerns and problems that have informed scholarly reflection among historians of South Asia, on precolonial and colonial India. In their scope and depth, the essays here seek to serve as correctives to the conventional perspectives in Indian history, particularly on the social consequences of colonialism, and the socio-economic history of the precolonial period. The issues discussed include the effects of learning and education in colonial India, aspects of social reforms and caste-based politics, and the emergence of religious identities, leading to the problem of communalism in the modern period. The delineation of ideological patterns in colonial India is taken further by discussions on the emergence of tribal turned-peasant communities in the precolonial period, and their later role in the political processes of the nineteenth century.