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Article: Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past.
- Article from:
- The Journal of the American Oriental Society
- Article date:
- April 1, 1998
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1998 American Oriental Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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By DILIP K. CHAKRABARTI. New Delhi: MUNSHIRAM MANOHARLAL, 1997. Pp. xi + 257. Rs 350.
Archaeologist Dilip K. Chakrabarti has produced a polemical survey of scholarship on ancient India. In addition to rehashing the "racist" assumptions of Western Indology, he charges his "mainstream" or "establishment" Indian colleagues with perpetuating the conventions of colonial scholarship in a way that is emblematic of the subservient relationship of the Third World to the West. Calling for the construction of an Indian perception of the Indian past, he argues, in apparent reference to historians of ancient India such as Romila Thapar, that this goal cannot be realized by ...