Imperial Encounters: Religion and Modernity in India and Britain

by Peter van der Veer

Picking up on Edward Said's claim that the historical experience of empire is common to both the colonizer and the colonized, Peter van der Veer takes the case of religion to examine the mutual impact of Britain's colonization of India on Indian and British culture. He shows that national culture in both India and Britain developed in relation to their shared colonial experience and that notions of religion and secularity were crucial in imagining the modern nation in both countries. In the process, van der Veer chronicles how these notions developed in the second half of the nineteenth century in relation to gender, race, language, spirituality, and science.

Avoiding the pitfalls of both world systems theory and national historiography, this book problematizes oppositions between modern and traditional, secular and religious, progressive and reactionary. It shows that what often are assumed to be opposites are, in fact, profoundly entangled. In doing so, it upsets the convenient fiction that India is the land of eternal religion, existing outside of history, while Britain is the epitome of modern secularity and an agent of history. Van der Veer also accounts for the continuing role of religion in British culture and the strong part religion has played in the development of Indian civil society. This masterly work of scholarship brings into view the effects of the very close encounter between India and Britain--an intimate encounter that defined the character of both nations.

Genres: History, India, Religion, Politics, Islam, Hinduism, Academic

216 pages, Paperback

First published March 20, 2001

Reviews

[versarbre · Rating 4 out of 5]

considering it published in 2001! Truly insightful!

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I would have picked up this book on my own - I had to read it for a class. But I actually enjoyed it. It was quite ensightful as the author deals with a side of colonialism that I am unfamiliar with. I was also very pleased with the organization of this book. Each chapter had its own layout that was explained at the beginning and then summed up again in a conclusion. It really helped to clear up the authors points and gave the book a good sense of flow and connectivity. The one criticism I have is it was quite dense. I found it hard sometimes to keep up with all of the authors examples but this was where the concluding remarks of each chapter were extremely useful.

[Sam Grace · Rating 3 out of 5]

The introduction is definitely the strongest part of the book, though I found the whole thing to be readable and useful. Fundamentally argues that modernity was constructed in an interactional history of India and Britain, and that religion was key in constructing the public sphere and national subjectivities.

[Marsha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant analysis of Colonial relations within the context of religion.