Idolatry and the Colonial Idea of India

This book explores literary and scholarly representations of India from the 18th to the early 20th centuries in South Asia and the West with idolatry as a point of entry. It charts the intellectual horizon within which the colonial idea of India was framed, tracing sources and genealogies which inform even contemporary descriptions of the subcon <p><em>Acknowledgments. </em>Introduction: Idolatry from Plato to <em>Indiana Jones</em> <strong>1.<em> </em></strong>William Jones and James Mill: The Duplicity of the Colonial Image <strong>2. </strong>Idolatry and Fetishism in the <i>Fin-de-siècle</i>: the Orientalism of Friedrich Max Müller <strong>3. </strong>The Aesthetic Image and the Idolatrous Grotesque: John Ruskin, Alice Perrin and E.M. Forster <strong>4. </strong>Reforming Idolatrous Hinduism: Rammohan Roy and Bankimchandra Chatterjee <strong>5. </strong>Conclusion: Idolatry, Ideology and the Nation-State. <i>References. Index</i></p>