Imagining India [Paperback]

An important book, a major work, that must be read and absorbed by those involved in scholarship, or any critical enterprise. The Independent

How does the Western world represent India? To what extent is knowledge of the people and institutions of the Indian sub-continent based on the West's own desires for world hegemony, and fantasies about its rationality? In this controversial and widely-praised book, Inden argues that the West's major depictions of India as the civilization of caste, villages, spiritualism, and divine kingsand as a land dominated by imagination rather than reasonhave had the effect of depriving Indians of their capacity to rule their world, which has consequently been appropriated by those in the West who wish to dominate it.

First published in 1990, Imagining India is required reading in many university courses. This edition contains a new introduction.

Ronald Inden is Professor of South Asian History at the University of Chicago.

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Plan of the Book

1 Knowledge of India and Human Agency
Essences
Agents: Systems of Overlapping Classes
Orientalist Discourse
2 India in Asia: The Caste Society
The Orients
Empirical, Real India: The Ruling Ideas
Romantic India
Dissenting and Changing Views
3 Hinduism: The Mind of India
Male Manager, Female Jungle: European Science and
Indian Religion
Psychic Origins
Brahmanism, the Aryan Mind in the Tropics
Hinduism, Symbols for the People
Medieval Decline, The Dravidian Mind
Triumphant
Jungians and Structuralists: Today's Variants
Critical Summary
4 Village India, Living Essence of the Ancient
Idyllic Communities
Organic Inside, Atomic Outside
Caste's Political Economy
Nationalist and Post-Independence Depictions
Critique
5 Divine Kingship, the Hindu Type of Government
Nation State, Natural State
Absolute Monarchy, Instrument of the Caste
Society