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The book concludes with an address to the contemporary generations of Indians, both in India and in the diaspora. It argues that, so far, Indians have taken over the European descriptions of their experience of India as though these descriptions are facts about India and her traditions. This prevents Indians from formulating what is valuable in the Indian traditions for humankind. This concluding chapter argues that in order to answer questions about the Indian traditions, Indians will first need to understand the western culture.

This chapter argues that a colonial consciousness pervades both colonial and modern descriptions of India. Through an interdisciplinary survey of descriptions of India as a corrupt, immoral and caste-ridden society, it shows that colonial ways of describing the world persist to this day. Colonial consciousness denies the presence of morality in Indian culture and takes the superiority of Western culture both as its presupposition and its conclusion. This stance can be traced back to the Christian theological understanding of ‘heathen religions’. This allows us to explain as to why colonialism is intrinsically immoral and why it has been perceived as an educational project. Colonialism modifies the Indian experience and replaces it with frameworks that are rationally unjustified and unjustifiable and must therefore be imposed (violently or otherwise). Finally, the chapter traces some consequences of this characterisation of colonialism for postcolonial claims about the ‘hybridity’ and resistance of the colonised.

This chapter focuses on a range of English language accounts of India's and Bengal's past composed during the mid-to late eighteenth century. Most of these accounts were written during the decline of the later Mughal political order in Bengal and the transformation of the English East India Company into the sovereign ruler of a large part of eastern India as a prelude to the extension of its empire to other parts of the subcontinent. The narratives present a contrast to the colonialist historiography of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. They also embody a phase in the evolution of colonialist discourse about India when the tendency to marginalize and look down upon Indian traditions of writing about the past had either not crystallized, or had not yet acquired the strength and conviction that it did later.

Beginning with a discussion of Ashis Nandy's views about the central traditions in India today and how they have changed in the last fifty years, this section also presents Nandy's views on evil in modern times and how his concept of tradition differs from the traditional school of thought. Nandy also shares his views about modernity as a form of tradition; modernity and violence; being a third world writer; the idea of India as a civilization; and who are the modern Indians.

This chapter shows how the contradictions and frustrations surrounding veterans came to a head with the onset of the “Indian New Deal” initiated by Franklin D. Roosevelt's Indian commissioner, John Collier. As Collier pushed his agenda of reform and return to communal landholding on Indian reservations, patriotism became the privileged weapon of an active minority of veterans spearheading resistance to the New Deal. Moreover, World War II proved a very favorable moment to realize a rhetorical and organizational connection that linked patriotism, the conservative defense of Indians' civic rights, and the rising tide of termination. At the end of the 1940s, the World War I generation reached the peak of its influence in Indian country and demonstrated the complexity of Indian patriotism. A new generation of Indian soldiers was soon to take their place. They would turn ceremonies popularized with World War I into a new, modern Indian tradition.

Music in India has always formed an important part in everyday life of Indians. This interview looks at the changes that occurred in the way Indians listen to music and whether Indian classical tradition of music is still based on the guru–shishya method of training. Madhup Mudgal also discusses the different Western influence on classical music and highlights the risk of losing Indian folk music due to cable television and cassette-based popular music.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Indian communities of Guyana and Trinidad. The lived experience of the Indian community in Guyana and Trinidad in some ways represents a cultural contradiction of belonging and non-belonging—of being a part of all that is the Caribbean yet not wanting to belong so completely as to be overwhelmed by the dominance of the African presence in the Caribbean, which confronts them on all levels. Beyond the impact of the cultural landscape of Guyana and Trinidad on people of Indian descent in the Caribbean is their own influence on the societies in which they live. What may have started out as essentially Indian traditions and rituals have become nationalized and celebrated by many people in Guyana and Trinidad who are not of Indian descent. The chapter then considers the theoretical perspective of creolization.

This chapter examines the unique melding of Western sexual magic and Indian Tantric traditions at the dawn of the twentieth century, focusing on the work of the Aleister Crowley. It discusses how Crowley made sex the supreme magical secret and the ultimate source of power, and considers his work in light of the debates surrounding sexuality and deviant sexual behavior. The chapter argues that Crowley is a remarkably Janus-faced figure, a kind of beast with two backs, turned both forward and backward because he reflected some of the central sexual and cultural issues of the early twentieth century while foreshadowing the crisis of modernity after the Second World War and many trends in recent postmodern thought as well.

This chapter discusses the importance of reading the ‘Asian classics.’ The reading and understanding of a text should work, as much as possible, from the inside out rather than from the outside in. This means making the effort to put ourselves in the position or situation of the author and his audience. No reading of an Eastern text should be undertaken that is so removed from its original context as to be discussable only in direct juxtaposition to something Western. Such a reading leads almost inevitably to one-sided comparisons and does not serve genuine dialogue. Party to this new dialogue must be enough of the original discourse so that the issues can be defined in their own terms and not simply in opposition to, or agreement with, the West. The chapter then presents a list of classics that could be argued to be essential to a basic reading program. These texts can serve as an introduction the Islamic, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese traditions. They include works that have withstood the tests of time not only in their own traditions but in at least sixty years of reading and discussion with American students of all ages.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, a legislative drive led to the creation of a number of specific laws. The state clearly saw itself as much more than a custodian of Indian notions of law and justice, as it did before 1857. It was now deliberately trying to create a comprehensive framework of substantive and procedural law, while drawing upon western concepts and Indian case law freely for that purpose. And yet, the legislative drive led to an upsurge in litigation. Apparently, the courts and the laws created new problems while solving old ones. For example, there were frequent overlaps between different laws for a certain type of dispute, the one between contract and procedure being especially common. The move from one driver (preserving Indian tradition) to another (a modern universal legal framework) had apparently ended up producing too many laws for the same dispute.

Building on the previous chapter, which deals with a wide range of Dalit materials and writers, this chapter focuses primarily on Ambedkar’s views, and their relationship to Indian agrarian and environment traditions. While the previous chapter provided a mosaic of Dalit voices, this chapter concentrates on one figure, and his significance in the modern environment movement of the country. A deeply perceptive thinker, a trenchant opponent of caste Hinduism, and a fighter of Dalit liberation, Ambedkar’s environmental perspectives are central to Dalit ecological visions.

Attempting to analyse James Tod’s position as self-elected defender of the cause of the Rajputs, this book takes “shape-shifting” and “self-translation” in the encounter with human difference, to account for Tod’s exhortation of respect for Rajput pride and honour to the British Government in India. Thomas Metcalf’s distinction between a Romantic sensitivity to Indian tradition, and a Whiggish, rational reforms and laws among British administrators in India, enables us to situate Tod as an ambivalent Romantic with a leaning to rational capitalist improvement in Rajputana. Dane Kennedy’s and David Washbrook’s emphasis on the porous relations between British colonial officials and Indians, using Bakhtin’s concept of many-voiced “dialogism” is particularly applicable to Tod’s context. Christopher A. Bayly and Michael S.Dodson refer to Homi Bhabha”s “hybridity” to better understand the processes of knowledge exchanges in the colonial situation, which is helpful in explaining Tod’s premature retirement from Rajasthan. Daniel Carey and Lynn Festa have drawn together Enlightenment ideas and Postcolonial ideas, advocating attention to diverse practices over umbrella concepts, contrapuntal readings over teleological readings of individual texts, and the importance of the HOWs over the WHATs of colonial encounter, all of which strategies are useful in understanding the paradoxes of Tod’s experience of Rajasthan. The Introduction closes with a summary of the book’s seven chapters.

This chapter talks of Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of non-violence. It explains that though Gandhi was the greatest exponent of the doctrine of ahimsa or non-violence in modern times, he was not its author because ahimsa has been part of the Indian religious tradition for centuries. However, he was able to transform what had been an individual ethic into a tool of social and political action. The chapter provides examples of non-violent struggles over the past two decades, and acknowledges that Gandhi’s ideas and methods are still appreciated by only a small enlightened minority in the world.

This chapter elaborates on a predominantly oral performance tradition called Talamaddale which is linked to the popular traditional form of Yakshagana performed in the southern state of Karnataka, India. Unlike the song, dance, and spectacle of Yakshagana, Talamaddale is known for the improvisatory verbal skills of actors who engage in intricate debates around specific characters and situations from the Ramayana narrative and other puranas. Highlighting the performative aspects of Talamaddale, the chapter interrelates three layers of texts which are illustrated with vivid examples: the written prasaṅga or narrative; the songs from the prasanga sung by the bhāgawata or lead singer; and dialogues that are improvised between the actors in each performance. Focusing on the relationship between Talamaddale and the Ramayana narrative tradition, the chapter shows how episodes from the source texts are selected, elaborated, interpreted, and textured into argumentative performances in which different episodes from diverse versions of the Ramayana narrative come alive through debating techniques and verbal repartee.