Enlightenment Modernity and Colonial South Asia

Undergraduate / Graduate

In Kant's words, the work of public reasoning was the condition for "man's exit from self-imposed immaturity." In the colony, however, the critique of existing society as insufficiently reasonable came to be caught up in the justification of Britain's "liberal" colonial project, and the obligation to Reason autonomously was embroiled in the case for empire. The Indian pursuit of enlightened reason was deeply aware of its uncomfortable proximity to empire, yet intellectuals of a variety of stripes advanced claims of "enlightenment. Would the appeal to Reason bring about a new moral world or a derivatively imitative landscape? Could the Enlightenment be so truly universal that the colonized could claim it without disowning their past? What relationship would the moral resources of India's past share with the task social critique for a new generation of radical intellectuals? In order to address the promise and perils of colonial Enlightenment and its most controversial debates, this course will focus on a variety of primary and secondary sources. We will look at arguments penned by a range of Indian and British thinkers and at how the rich historiography of India's 19th century may be placed in productive dialogue with the normative theory produced by Europe's "Enlightenment." Turning to the history of 19th century India will help us complicate the history of the Enlightenment as a whole, and contribute to help draft a new and broader answer: what is "Enlightenment?"