In this book a leading Indian political philosopher criticizes Western theories of Third World nationalism—both liberal and Marxist. He demonstrates how Western theorists, with their emphasis on the power of reason, the primacy of the hard sciences, and the dominance of the empirical method, have assumed that their presuppositions are universally valid, and, through the impact of Western education, have imposed concepts of nationalism on non-Western peoples to the detriment, if not destruction, of their own world-views. The author explores the central contradiction that nationalism in Africa and Asia has consequently experienced: setting out to assert its freedom from European domination, it yet remained a prisoner of European post-Enlightenment rationalist discourse.

Using the case of India, Professor Chatterjee goes on to show how Indian nationalism did effect significant displacements in the framework of modernist thinking imbibed from the West. Yet, despite constituting itself as a different discourse, it remained dominated by the very structure of power it sought to repudiate. And so the historical outcome generally has been the transformation of Third World nationalism by ruling classes into a state ideology legitimizing their own rule, appropriating the life of the nation, and propelling it along the path of ‘universal modernization’. But the spurious ideological unity proclaimed by these classes, and their failure to subsume completely the life of the nation in the life of their new states, raises the historical prospect that a critique of state nationalism will emerge.

This profound exercise in political philosophy questions the legitimacy of the currently predominant formulations of nationalist ideology in the Third World. It anticipates a new generation of popular struggles that will redefine the content of Afro-Asian nationalism and the kinds of society people wish to build.

For scholars, it will make uncomfortable reading because of its radical attack on the fundamentals of Western bourgeois thought, an attack always couched, however, in the rational tones of Western scholarship.

The case of Bengal illustrates the interaction of colonialism and modernity.

Bengal was the first “modern” province in India-the first, that is, to undergo a forced encounter with Western modernity. Beginning with this premise, the writers in Texts of Power consider what the case of Bengal says about the workings of Western modernity in a colonial setting.

A truly interdisciplinary effort, this collection probes questions of pedagogy, nationalism, and gender. Among the subjects explored are colonialist and nationalist surveillance of Bengali literature; the disposition of the nation’s art; the politics of child-rearing; the mapping of Calcutta; and the disciplining of historical memory. By applying the theoretical insights of recent historical and cultural studies to the specific circumstances of Bengal, the authors develop a new approach to Indian intellectual and cultural history. Their work makes a significant contribution to our understanding of contemporary intellectual modernity.Contributors: Pradip Kumar Bose, Keya Dasgupta, Tapati Guha-Thakurta, all at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta; Tapti Roy, Maharani Kashiswari College, Calcutta; Ranabir Samaddar, Maulana Azad Institute of Asian Studies.