Abstract

‘Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia’ offers a series of analyses that highlights the complexities of British and Indian civilizing missions in original ways and through various historiographical approaches. The book applies the concept of the civilizing mission to a number of issues in the colonial and postcolonial eras in South Asia: economic development, state-building, pacification, nationalism, cultural improvement, gender and generational relations, caste and untouchability, religion and missionaries, class relations, urbanization, NGOs, and civil society.

‘The present set of essays is a valuable contribution to the ongoing discourse made relevant in the wake of neocolonialism and invasion of independent nations carried out in the name of progress of “less civilized” societies. […] [S]uch [a] broad spectrum of continuities of the “civilizing mission,” within and beyond India in the colonial and postcolonial periods, adds to the appeal of this volume. […]This volume should therefore be a necessary addition to the library of every student of history.’ —Vinod John, ‘Religious Studies Review’

‘Civilizing Missions in Colonial and Postcolonial South Asia’ demonstrates how the civilizing mission can serve as an analytical rubric with relevance to many themes in the colonial and postcolonial eras: economic development, state building, pacification, nationalism, cultural improvement, gender and generational relations, caste and untouchability, religion and missionaries, class relations, urbanization, NGOs, and civil society.

While some chapters investigate civilizing initiatives that were driven by the British Raj or Indian postcolonial state, the book also considers many examples of nongovernmental undertakings. For example, examining the role of missionary educational endeavours shows how missionary bodies could operate in an ambivalent space between Indians and the colonial state. Moreover, analysis of Indian civilizing efforts carried out by nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), the nationalist movement or postcolonial Indian states gives us interesting opportunities to scrutinize how the civilizing mission could be internalized as a form of 'self-civilizing' by Indians. Some papers also show the global linkages of civilizing efforts in the British Empire, while others examine long-term continuities through broad comparative analyses covering the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This takes us into the postcolonial era (beyond 1947, into the late twentieth and twenty-first centuries), and such 'transgressions' across the colonial divide give this volume added appeal.

Carey A. Watt holds a PhD in South Asian history from the University of Cambridge, and is currently Associate Professor of History (South Asia/World) at St. Thomas University in Canada.

Michael Mann holds a PhD from the University of Heidelberg and is currently Professor of South Asian History and Culture at Humboldt University, Berlin.