ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Haunted by the Nation: Humanities in Postcolonial India, c. 1947–1984

• In Event: Pluralism and the Human Sciences in Imperial and Postcolonial Contexts

English Abstract

Attempts to find a rationale for the teaching and support of humanities in postcolonial India, especially during the Nehruvian push for science, engineering, and managerialism, had to contend with the specter of the nation. The nation appeared in many forms. Educationists such as TA Mathias saw it as the locus of a “religion-based traditional culture” and regarded the humanities as mediating the relationship between that “traditional culture” and the new technological age. Others, such as the education bureaucrat HP Srivastava, argued that humanities were needed to promote a sense of patriotism. Humanities in postcolonial India thus had to find its justification through the figure of the nation. While most writers acknowledged India’s place within a community of nations, they insisted that humanities education must be imagined within a specifically national frame. This contrasted with the sciences: although they were often promoted as addressing national developmental needs, their content was not reimagined in national terms. Indeed, several authors explicitly wrote of humanities as being necessary in nationalizing the context-free universalism of science. Humanities were thus fundamentally plural—but the scale of that plurality was unquestionably national.

Author

• Projit Bihari Mukharji, Ashoka University