Modernities in Asian Perspective – Kausik Bandyopadhyay

Relentless effort of becoming modern haunts the East. Its omnipresence can be felt in every sphere of social fabric. Social phenomenon is judged from a preconceived notion of modernity, which is essentially a Western construct. This volume on the contrary has put forward the responses of the East in a colonial, semi-colonial and even post-colonial setting to the given standards of modernity in the conventional Western paradigm, thereby adding to the heterogeneity of the modern theoretical discourse. The essays have emphasized on the theoretical binary of passive acceptance and active borrowing. They, while trying to re-contextualize the borrowed notion, actually try to explore something distinctively modern, yet recognizably different from the Western one.



Kausik Bandyopadhyay is Reader in History at West Bengal State University, Barasat, West Bengal. A former Fellow of the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Institute of Asian Studies, Kolkata. His areas of research interest include the social history of modern India, history of sport and popular culture, and contemporary South Asia.



Contents

Prologue

1. Modernity on trial: nationhood and nationalism in South Asia

2. ‘Modernity’ and the Uzbek State: the writings of President Islam A.Karimov.

3. Zionism: a modernizing discourse?

4. Encountering colonial modernity: British rule and the Hos of Singbhum.

5. Sastric modernity:mediating Sanskrit knowledge in colonial Bengal.

6. The ‘modern’ popular:emergence of a film culture in Bengal.

7. Confronting Western cultural imperialism: soccer,modernity and nationalism in colonial India.

8. Modernization: the abiding metaphor of India.