Description
Book SynopsisBeginning in 1835, British colonizers sought to promote modern, western knowledge in India, primarily through schools. Delving into a large archive of popular writings, and drawing on history, political science, and philosophy, the author considers western education in India from various perspectives.
Trade Review“
Subject Lessons is a very important contribution to understanding of the coloniality of knowledge and of being. Imperial control is mainly control of subjectivity, and the control of subjectivity is largely based on education, on the formation of those to be subjected. Sanjay Seth’s study of education in colonial India has implications far beyond the subcontinent. Touching on epistemology, politics (governmentality), religion (Muslims in India), the idea of the nation, gender and sexuality, ethics and history, Seth describes how the logic of coloniality has been and continues to be globally enacted.”—Walter Mignolo, author of
The Idea of Latin America“
Subject Lessons revives a field that has remained dormant for years: the history of education in colonial India. This in itself is no small achievement. But Sanjay Seth does a lot more than that. Weaving together history and philosophical critiques of historicity and modernity, Seth has produced a book that is at once thoughtful and provocative. This outstanding book makes an original contribution to postcolonial criticism.”—Dipesh Chakrabarty, author of
Habitations of Modernity: Essays in the Wake of Subaltern Studies“[T]hought-provoking . . . further enriches the growing wealth of material on women’s and gender history and highlights the significance of educational history within it.” -- Ruth Watts * Gender & History *
“Very rarely has the English education of colonial India and its contiguities been closely examined and problematized. Seth’s enquiry into the dissemination of western education poses larger questions about what we accept as history and historiography, modern and modernity, and more importantly, remains conscious of the inescapability from western epistemologies in knowing the world. . . . [A]n erudite starting point for those like me to critically examine the learning and unlearning of the canon from within the canon itself.” -- Divya Anand * Thesis Eleven *
"The most triumphant success of Seth's book is the way it takes apart influential epistemological categories." -- Saikat Majumdar * Los Angeles Review of Books *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction 1
Part 1: Subject to Pedagogy
1. Changing the Subject: Western Knowledge and the Question of Difference 17
2. Diagnosing Moral Crisis: Western Knowledge and Its Indian Object 47
3. Which Past? Whose History? 79
Part II: Modern Knowledge, Modern Nation
4. Governmentality and Identity: Constituting the “Backward but Proud Muslim” 109
5. Gender and the Nation: Debating Female Education 129
6. Vernacular Modernity: The Nationalist Imagination 159
Epilogue: Knowing Modernity, Being Modern 183
Notes 197
Bibliography 235
Index 259
