Courses

This course is intended to provide a broad yet thorough grounding in the major themes in South Asian historiography. Historians of/and about South Asia have participated in defining major debates across academy, especially in postcolonial studies and in the prominence of Subaltern Studies in the 80s and 90s. In 1947, the twinned “Republic of India” and “Islamic Republic of Pakistan,” gained independence from British colonial rule. With independence came the establishment of new universities and history departments but also the continuation of centuries old tradition of ‘studying’ the subcontinent at Oxford and Cambridge. After 1957’s launch of Sputnik, United States embarked on a massive investment in the study of the “Third World” to keep Communism at bay: giving rise to “Area Studies.” The longer “Indology” gave way to new anthropologies of “Village India” and the rise of “Development Studies.” Fulbright and Rhoades scholarships took students from Lahore and Delhi and Calcutta to UK and US to study. From such grounds would the study of colonial rule and governance, ideas of Kingship, Hinduism develop along both nationalist and Marxist lines to make the first major, international intervention globally: the School of Subaltern Studies in 1983. Since then, South Asian historiography has contributed importantly to postcolonial thought and to the study of Women, Gender and Sexuality. This course focuses on important themes—that cut across medieval to modern period—and highlight the key debates in the historiography as a series of “Questions” of Colonial Knowledge, of Governance, of the Origins, of the King, of the Peasant, of the Nation, of the Woman, of the Muslim, of Caste, of the Riot, of Language, of the City, of Borders, of the Citizen, and finally, of History itself.

The attempt throughout the course is to introduce students to the ‘canonical,’ field-defining texts which create the foundations from which South Asian studies—as a field—contributed to historiographies in North America, Latin American, Asia and Africa.