Cosmopolitan thought zones

About this book

This volume represents a major contribution to the study of South Asian intellectual history in transnational perspective. It critically examines forms of South Asian cosmopolitanism in the era of anti-colonial agitation. Starting with the assertion that the history of political ideas in South Asia can neither be pictured as the contestation between well-defined `local' and `global' epistemes, nor as the battle between `patriotic' and `internationalist' perspectives, these essays throw unprecedented light on the intermediate spaces of intellectual encounter and interchange that linked South Asian thinkers to counterparts and conversations worldwide from the late nineteenth century through to independence. These essays discard presuppositions about hermetically-sealed local traditions endangered by `Westernizing' forces, and undo the stubborn tether that ties the study of colonial South Asian thought to the British metropolis alone. The imaginative and physical travels of intellectuals and political activists across oceans, from Johannesburg to Tokyo, from Calcutta to New York, or from Bombay to Rome, emerge as significant trajectories for the study of South Asian history within global horizons. The interactions with other colonized groups worldwide, with Europeans outside Britain and with minoritized communities in North America, constitute a largely unexplored archive for the study of modern South Asian history. --Book Jacket.