Colonial and Post-Colonial Geographies of India

by Saraswati Raju (Editor), M. Satish Kumar (Editor), Stuart Corbridge (Editor)

This collection of original essays by scholars of geography from India, Western Europe, and the USA provides important insights into the way contemporary geographers are engaging with India. The earlier narrow colonial focus that saw India as a country of resources and "peoples" (tribes and castes) has now been discarded for a broader view located in mainstream intellectual frameworks and informed by a public policy perspective. This volume highlights how contemporary geographers see and write on topics such as the state, nation, community, environment, and division of labor, while keeping in mind issues of spatiality and territoriality.

356 pages, Hardcover

First published March 29, 2006

Reviews

[Cain S. · Rating 1 out of 5]

Post-colonial Geography is a sub-genre belonging to the affirmative action humanities disciplines created to manufacture white collar jobs for unskilled but upwardly mobile aspirational classes. This geography book achieves the mighty feat of spending 319 pages--excluding references and a bibliography--without any significant discussion of the physical or political geography of India. Focusing on gender, religion, caste, and class identities before and after independence, rather than landmasses, water bodies, resource endowment, or developmental potential of land tracts, the book is an indulgent exercise in holding pre-independence British civil administration responsible for regional disparities better explained by preexisting regional labour characteristics and cultural peculiarities which also persist today. Damningly, in this book a comprehensive geography of India whether pre or post colonial is nowhere to be found.