Brannon Ingram (EDT), J. Barton Scott (EDT), SherAli K Tareen (EDT) Imagining the Public in Modern South Asia

Annotation

In South Asia, as elsewhere, the category of 'the public' has come under increased scholarly and popular scrutiny in recent years. To better understand this current conjuncture, we need a fuller understanding of the specifically South Asian history of the term.a To that end, this book surveys the modern Indian 'public' across multiple historical contexts and sites, with contributions from leading scholars of South Asia in anthropology, history, literary studies and religious studies. As a whole, this volumea highlightsa the complex genealogies of thea publica in the Indian subcontinent during the colonial and postcolonial eras, showing in particular howa British notionsa of 'the public' intersected witha South Asiana forms of publicity. Two principal methods or approaches-the genealogical and the typological-have characterised this scholarship. This book suggests, more in the mode of genealogy, that the category of the public has been closely linked to the sub-continental history of political liberalism. Also discussed is how the studies collected in this volume challenge some of liberalism's key presuppositions about the public and its relationship to law and religion.