Thugs and Dacoits: Volume VI: The Imperial Archives-From Discovery to the Civilisational Mission: English Writings on India

(Hardback)

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

The volumes focus on select aspects of the British imperial archives: the accounts of discovery and exploration fauna and flora, geography, climate the people of the subcontinent, English domesticity and social life in the subcontinent, the wars and skirmishes including the Mutiny of 1857-58 and the civilisational mission. This volume documents how the practice of thuggee was viewed by the British before: as if it symbolized everything that was wrong with the social order in India. The texts collected here are accounts of how the British discovered the subcontinent. The narrative of discovery, with the freshness of the new, was couched very often in the rhetoric of wonder. But this sense of wonder, even astonishment in some cases at the variety, magnitude and sheer difference of the land and its people, was tempered over time with a narrative of exploration.

Author Bio

Pramod K. Nayar teaches at the Department of English, University of Hyderabad, India. Nayar also holds the UNESCO Chair in Vulnerability Studies at the University of Hyderabad.