The Book
There are many cultures. However, only one culture – a Western, colonial culture – has offered descriptions of the other cultures. These Western descriptions have recently been questioned by postcolonial theory/discourse, which had not, however, studied the colonial culture that produced these descriptions.
The Difficulty of Being Heathen aims to radically question colonial descriptions of Indian society. It shows how such descriptions are not factual reports about Indian society, but reflections of the Western culture's experience of Indian social realities.
Instead of providing knowledge about the society it tries to describe (that is, India), colonial descriptions refer instead to the experience of the culture that does the describing (that is, the West).
Creating a new framework for understanding issues relating to history, politics, law, and community formation in India, this volume challenges such colonial descriptions while providing a theory about the structure of the Western experience of Indian society.
The Author(s)
The Editors
A. P. Ashwin Kumar is Professor at the School of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Chanakya University, Bengaluru, where he also heads the Centre for Languages and Lifeworlds.
Vivek Dhareshwar is currently engaged in building a platform for learning and teaching called Indian Slate. He was a co-founder, senior fellow and (for a time) Director of the Centre for the Study of Culture and Society, Bengaluru.
Table of Contents
Publisher’s Acknowledgements
From the Series Editors
Prefatory Note
A. P. Ashwin Kumar and Vivek Dhareshwar
1. Introduction: An Institution and a Research Programme
Vivek Dhareshwar
2. Valorising the Present: Orientalism, Postcoloniality, and the Human Sciences
Vivek Dhareshwar
3. Normativity and Experience: An Inquiry into the Formation of Ontologically Peculiar Objects
Vivek Dhareshwar
4. The University, Liberal Education, and the Case of India
Shashikala Srinivasan
5. In Search of a Language for Experience: Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and his Contemporary Critics
Polly Hazarika
6. The Gandhi–Ambedkar Debates on Untouchability: Two Critiques of Society
Elizabeth Thomas
7. Doxastic Community Experience: Towards an Abductive Theory of Nationalism
A. P. Ashwin Kumar
8. On the Difficulty of Refuting or Confirming the Arguments about the Caste System
Dunkin Jalki and Sufiya Pathan
9. Adhyasa and the ‘I’: On Some Aspects of Stereotypes
Vivek Dhareshwar
Afterword
The Difficulty of (being) Heathen: Doing Science, Reflecting on Experience, Creating Practitions
Vivek Dhareshwar
Cultural Studies to Studying Cultures
A. P. Ashwin Kumar
Annexure
The Human Sciences and the Asian Experience
Notes on the Contributors
Index