The Thought of Nirad C. Chaudhuri: Islam, Empire and Loss

by Ian Almond

In this critical examination of the famous South Asian thinker Nirad C. Chaudhuri (1897 1999), a notorious Anglophile and defender of Empire, Ian Almond analyses the factors that played a role in the evolution of his thought. Almond explores how Empire creates 'native informants', enabling local subjects to alienate themselves from and even abhor their own cultures. Through analysis of Chaudhuri's views on Islam, his use of the archive, moments of melancholy and loss in his writing, and his opinions on Empire, Almond dissects the constitution of an Indian writer and locates the precise ways in which Chaudhuri was able to produce the kind of discourses he did, exploring how conservative, pro-Western intellectuals are formed in postcolonial environments. A strong comparative element places Chaudhuri's views in the context of conservative intellectuals from Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia, concluding with a consideration of present-day 'native informants' from these regions."

196 pages, Hardcover

Published September 3, 2015

About the author

Ian Almond is a Professor of World Literature at Georgetown University (Qatar). He received his PhD in English Literature from Edinburgh University in 2000. He is the author of five books, most recently Two Faiths, One Banner (Harvard University Press, 2009) and History of Islam in German Thought (Routledge, 2010), and over forty articles in a variety of journals including PMLA, Radical Philosophy, ELH and New Literary History. He specializes in comparative world literature, with a tri-continental emphasis on Mexico, Bengal and Turkey. His books have been translated into eleven languages, including Arabic, Russian, Turkish, Korean, Serbo-Croat, Persian and Indonesian. His fifth book, on Nirad C. Chaudhuri, came out with Cambridge University Press last year.