Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space

by Manu Goswami

When did categories such as a national space and economy acquire self-evident meaning and a global reach? Why do nationalist movements demand a territorial fix between a particular space, economy, culture, and people?

Producing India mounts a formidable challenge to the entrenched practice of methodological nationalism that has accorded an exaggerated privilege to the nation-state as a dominant unit of historical and political analysis. Manu Goswami locates the origins and contradictions of Indian nationalism in the convergence of the lived experience of colonial space, the expansive logic of capital, and interstate dynamics. Building on and critically extending subaltern and postcolonial perspectives, her study shows how nineteenth-century conceptions of India as a bounded national space and economy bequeathed an enduring tension between a universalistic political economy of nationhood and a nativist project that continues to haunt the present moment.

Elegantly conceived and judiciously argued, Producing India will be invaluable to students of history, political economy, geography, and Asian studies.

Genres: History, Theory

400 pages, Paperback

First published June 15, 2004

Reviews

[Nudrat · Rating 3 out of 5]

The intellectual, grad-school-going side of me is like: this was a very theoretically dense but intellectually stimulating insight into the development of nationalism in South Asia not just as a discursive ideology but also as a political and economic space, and that it is very useful in understanding contemporary politics in India and Pakistan and the way nationalism and communalism still work in complicated ways here.

The normal, book-reading side of me is like: THANK GOD THIS IS OVER JEEEEEEZ.

[Blessy Abraham · Rating 4 out of 5]

Manu Goswami's book can initially seem a bit of difficult book to get through for a first time reader because of its theory heavy prose and very complicated vocabulary. But once you get past the verbose bedazzlement, you get a book that seeks to understand not just the conceptualization of categories like nation, economy and nationalism, but also how these particularistic forms are produced within an universalistic framework of development within the late nineteenth century period of various global restructuring processes. The book examine how the idea of India, or more appropriately an upper caste Hindu nationalist notion of Bharat Mata gained traction in North Indian native imagination within the unevenness created by colonial state space. And like its title suggests, the book explores how anticolonial thought imagines and brings to form this production of the categories of an embedded territorially bounded nation and economy, while also being heavily influenced by Listian ideologies as well in antagonism with abstract classical economics which is seen as a representation of British hegemony. It also studies how this historical production of this space is also shaped by gendered notions of preserving the purity of the condensed space preserved in the image of Bharat Mata as well as how much this specific understanding of nation and nationhood in historical imagination is dependent on framing not just the colonials but also the Muslim as a perpetual outsider. And through this Goswami tries to make evident the internal relationship between nationalism and communalism that remains a fixture of politics of nationalism even today.
Definitely a book worth reading for postgraduate scholars of history and higher. Have an online dictionary and constant google access to keep up with terms and theories that Goswami constantly throws at you especially through the introductions. I actually did learn a lot and so no complaints on those grounds. Moreover, I feel a bit proud that I was able to keep up with the arguments presented by Goswami! Also its a book that links together various strands of Indian economic and nationalist thought in late nineteenth century and it helps to better understand what the historical arena of institutional nationalism of the INC was like before the more politically vibrant years of Gandhi during the twentieth century .

[Suhani · Rating 4 out of 5]

Written in a very unnecessarily dense way, and the first half of the book is better than the second half (early colonial period history better than the later) but overall some very interesting stuff in here on capitalism, nationalism, intellectual history, and space/geography

[Upik · Rating 1 out of 5]

My God!! This book is supposed to be very good, but I am stuck in the introduction section, cringing at the big words the author uses. I understand that an academic needs to use precise vocabularies. However, the author could have used more humble words to communicate her ideas faster, and better.

Judging at some of the names she thanks in the acknowledgment section, I shouldn't be surprised. They seem to share this peculiar style of writing.

Still stuck at introduction section... Sigh sigh sigh.....

Updated 09/2011: never got beyond halfway of introduction, but I scanned the section on colonial education. I expected something more solid than what is offered.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I give myself 5 stars for finishing this book. I won't claim that I understood half of it, but it was a very dense and educational experience. I truly appreciate Goswami's focus on the paradoxical impacts which British Imperial capitalism had on the attempts of Indians to imagine thier nation. In trying to create a national identity and economy, many were marginalized from the process. There's so much going on in this book, that it should probably be read a few times. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the application of theory to history (she communicates with a lot of heavy hitters such as David Harvey, Benedict Anderson, Karl Marx, Clifford Geertz, and Immanuel Wallerstein). Also, much of the focus is centered on the process of nation building and national identities. Overall, this book is a difficult read but if you're into that, this book is for you.

[Casey Mathur · Rating 4 out of 5]

a favorite of mine. Somewhat heavy on lefebvre's influence but really brilliant book. Incredibly densely written, most of it could have been reworded in a much easier way but who am I to judge- my own writing's not so good. But the insights on the post 1857 restructuring of South Asia and the production of India as national state space is really brilliant. I would have liked if the book could go more into the simultaneous production of Pakistan, west and east (modern-day Bangladesh), as itself a spatially-bounded national conception, which it addresses towards the end. One of the "canon" books of modern south asian studies, and rightfully so.

[Rick · Rating 1 out of 5]

Why didn't I like this book? Consider the following sentence that appears in the concluding chapter. "The constitutive elements of Indian nationalism -- the territorial nativist envisioning of Bharat as an organic national whole; the tension between a universalistic conception of development and a particularistic vision of nationhood; the swadeshi-borne faith in forging a uniquely pacific path of industrialization that would yield capitalist development without Gesellschaft -- were expressed and shaped through the particular cultural and social logics and categories of understanding." Sentences like that one hurt my brain.