In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • Introduction
  • R. S. Khare (bio)

I

Given its vast subject, this symposium is exploratory and limited in some distinct ways. For instance, despite an effort to include diverse contributions on a wide range of topics and issues, this collection has ended up being focused primarily around India (rather than on Europe and the United States as well); only two contributors (Mukherjee and Rao) are women; and the Indian women’s and Dalits’ issues and views are not as thoroughly covered as hoped. Still, I am glad that the commentator has brought some attention to the last two aspects. The initial pool of scholars Professor Ralph Cohen and/or I had the privilege to invite for our “writing symposium” was nevertheless wide-ranging, representing several different disciplines and globally diverse academic locations. Every contributor was encouraged to tackle the subject in his or her own way and all the contributors were enthusiastic and they wanted to address the subject afresh, reflecting their distinct disciplinary research interests and conceptual issues in today’s postcolonial, globalizing, yet angst-ridden world. Together, the contributions collectively composed a distinct (diverse but not disconnected) profile, commenting on the many challenges that India and the leading constituents of the West still face, separately and together, as much in deciphering one’s own distinct pasts and present as those of the other side.

Though the assembled nine contributions, plus the invited comment, could be read in many different sequences (or even clusters), depending on a reader’s major interest or concern, I group them here in two broad clusters for their discernable overall directions. The first five contributors (R. S. Khare, Jonardon Ganeri, Sanjay Krishnan, Vinay Lal, and Sudesh Mishra) review and reinterpret a wide array of the long extant as well as recently transforming India-West dialogues and debates, including the representations in Hindi cinema. The second group (Arun Mukher-jee, Vyjayanthi Rao, Vijay Mishra and Faisal Devji), on the other hand, broadly focuses on four distinct India-West “encounters” (the place of John Dewey in a towering Indian Dalit leader’s modern makeup; the transforming cultural archives of the major Indian cities under globalization; a critical inclusion of post-Independence Indian literary forms and popular language use in English writings on the subcontinent; and [End Page vii] a reinterpretation of the 1857 Indian Mutiny to understand some interrelationships between colonial Britain and modern India).

Overall, the collected studies take the reader through a wide variety of comparative historical-cultural formations, whether the highways, some major avenues, or even the side lanes, highlighting some distinct challenges as well as rewards. The participants represent a wide range of comparative perspectives from history and historiography, sociology-anthropology, and political, religious, and philosophical studies to literature, literary aesthetics, cinematic studies, and comparative urban architecture. Still, as already indicated, given the vastness of the subject, this collection could have hardly hoped to “cover” all that was representative and/or significant for India, much less all the major participating or dialoguing constituents of the West. Still, the symposium will have met its goal if it whets the reader’s appetite.

For those distant from the subject of this symposium, a reliable “get-acquainted” account and an overview of the comparative India-West historical, cultural-philosophical, and religious “exchanges” might be useful to mention.1 Such a comparative account may highlight an historical and cultural distinctness—and an alienation—which has long framed—and often impeded—rigorous comparative studies of Indian and Western issues. Some distinctly historical and cultural facts have also played their roles. For instance, while different constituents of the West had “come” to India, with their own distinct biases, over many a century, in several waves, essentially for trade and/or conquest, India had remained “passive,” but with its own distinct brand of xenophobic feelings, resting often on dominant regional social ways and a religious-ritual worldview. These considerations in India weighed in frequently until the nineteenth century, and they began to fall away and disappear rapidly by mid-twentieth-century Indian independence. In fact, the modernity-led Western colonial, the Indian anticolonial, and the Indian postcolonial forces have received critical attention in modern India, encouraging some major dialoguing constituents...

pdf

Share