Seminar Questions:

1. What does the extract from the report of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce in 1921 (seminar reading) tell us about the ways in which colonialism was perceived as a project by its upholders?
2. Discuss the concept of the ‘rule of colonial difference’.
3. How does a study of racialized forms of violence help us understand structures of colonial rule?

Seminar Readings:

1. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation And Its Fragments: Colonial And Postcolonial Histories (Princeton, 1993), cht.2, ‘The Colonial State’ (pp.14-34)
2. Report of the Committee of the Bengal Chamber of Commerce for 1921, vol.1, extract, pp. viii-xiii
3. Jordanna Bailkin, ‘The Boot And The Spleen: When Was Murder Possible in British India?’, Comparative Studies in Society And History, 48.2 (2006), pp.463-494

Background Readings:

1. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, From Plassey to Partition: A History of Modern India (Delhi, 2010), chapters 1 and 2.
2. Sumit Sarkar, Modern Times: India 1880s-1950s (Ranikhet, 2014), chapter 1.
3. Sugata Bose & Ayesha Jalal: Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (London & New York, 2001), pp. 48-165
4. Indivar Kamtekar, “A Different War Dance: State And Class in India 1939-1945”, Past And Present, 176:1 (2002), pp. 187-221