China, India and Alternative Asian Modernities

287 Pages·2019·1.521 MB·English

by  Sanjay Kumar, Satya P. Mohanty, Archana Kumar, Raj Kumar

CHINA, INDIA AND ALTERNATIVE
ASIAN MODERNITIES
‘This rich collection of essays pluralizes our understandings
of modernity by offering new conceptual frameworks and
empirically grounded analyses of alternative modernities.
The contributions, all by well-known scholars, show how
differently the world was experienced and constructed
across time and space in Asia.’
— Anand Yang, Professor and Chair, Department of
History, University of Washington, author of
Bazaar India: Markets, Society, and the
Colonial State in Bihar (U of California
Press, 1999) and co-editor of a multi-volume
New Oxford World History series
published by Oxford University Press
‘This is an excellent collection of essays on India, China,
and beyond by some of the outstanding scholars in
the field. The book offers insights into a wide range of
topics, from issues of modernity to circulatory history.
It also presents innovative methodologies to study and
understand Asia through comparative and connected
frameworks. The book will appeal not only to historians
and anthropologists, but also to those interested in the
religious, philosophical as well as the political traditions
of Asia.’
— Tansen Sen, Director of the Center for
Global Asia and Professor of History at NYU
Shanghai and Global Network Professor at NYU,
author of Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade:
The Realignment of India–China Relations,
600–1400 (U of Hawai’i Press, 2003); India,
China, and the World: A Connected History
(Rowman & Littlefield, 2017)
‘From ‘connected’ to ‘circulatory’ and ‘competitive’
histories, this volume brings together a stellar cast of
scholars, from across a range of disciplines, to provide
alternative and vernacular accounts of modernity in
China, India and Southeast Asia. It provides a platform
for conversations between ‘alternative’ modernities as
south–south dialogues, making it unnecessary for these
conversations to be always mediated through the west.
It is a timely venture and an ever more important one.’
— Gurminder K. Bhambra, Professor of
Postcolonial and Decolonial Studies,
University of Sussex, author of Rethinking
Modernity: Postcolonialism and the
Sociological Imagination (Palgrave, 2007);
Connected Sociologies (Bloomsbury 2014)
‘It is now abundantly clear that some of the deepest
problems engendered by capitalist modernity cannot
be solved only by the social, political and ethical
categories associated with the modern west. Yet, while
much scholarly energy and effort have been expended
on a small but dominant number of western traditions,
little systematic research has been done to excavate the
conceptual treasures of other non-w estern forms of life.
Only when the resources of the critical t raditions of India,
Africa, China, Persia, Arab, and the Latin American
subcontinent are imaginatively unearthed will we make
headway towards addressing the pressing issues of our
times and transform the social and political imaginaries
of our crisis-ridden societies. This illuminating collection
of essays on Indian and Chinese modernity will make an
invaluable contribution towards that endeavor and is
bound to become an i ndispensable guide to alternative
modernities.’
— Rajeev Bhargava, Professor, CSDS, Delhi,
author of The Promise of India’s Secular
Democracy (OUP, 2010) and Secular
States and Religious Diversity (UBC Press,
Vancouver, 2013)
The conception of modernity as a radical rupture from the past runs
parallel to the conception of Europe as the primary locus of global
history. The chapters in this volume contest the temporal and spatial
divisions – between past and present, modernity and tradition, and
Europe’s progress and Asia’s stasis – which the conventional narrative
of modernity creates. Drawing on early modern Chinese and Indian
history and culture instead, the authors of the book explore the
provenance of modernity beyond the west to see it in a transcultural
and pluralistic light.
The central argument of this volume is that modernity does not
have a singular core or essence – a causal center. Its key features
need to be disaggregated and new configurations and combinations
imagined. By studying the Bhakti movement, Confucian democracy
and the maritime and agrarian economies of China and India, this
book enlarges the terms of debate and revisits devalued terms and
concepts like tradition, religion, authority and the rural as resources
for modernity.
This book will be of great interest to researchers and academicians
working in the areas of history, sociology, cultural studies, literature,
geopolitics, South Asian and East Asian studies.
Sanjay Kumar is Professor of English at Banaras Hindu University. He
is engaged in a comparative study of South Asian vernacular and folk
literary and cultural traditions as sites of articulation of alternative
modernities.
Satya P. Mohanty is Professor of English at Cornell University. He
has written and edited books on literary theory, minority studies and
colonial and postcolonial studies.
Archana Kumar is Professor of English at Banaras Hindu University.
She is currently engaged in research on women’s folk culture and has
done extensive fieldwork in the Banaras region to collect women’s
folksongs.
Raj Kumar is Professor of Hindi at Banaras Hindu University. He has
extensively published research articles in reputed Hindi journals and
is currently involved in a comprehensive project of retrieving, editing
and interpreting rare vernacular texts and manuscripts of the early
modern period.

CHINA, INDIA AND
ALTERNATIVE ASIAN
MODERNITIES
Edited by Sanjay Kumar,
Satya P. Mohanty,
Archana Kumar and Raj Kumar
First published 2019
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group,
an informa business
© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Sanjay Kumar, Satya
P. Mohanty, Archana Kumar and Raj Kumar; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Sanjay Kumar, Satya P. Mohanty, Archana Kumar
and Raj Kumar to be identified as the authors of the editorial
material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has
been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted
or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
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ISBN: 978-1-138-33978-1 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-26086-5 (ebk)
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CONTENTS
Notes on contributors xi
Preface and acknowledgments xvi
Alternative Asian modernities: an introduction xviii
SANJAY KUMAR, SATYA P. MOHANTY, ARCHANA KUMAR
AND RAJ KUMAR
PART I
Transcultural Asian modernities 1
1 European self-making and India’s alternative
modernities 3
ARJUN APPADURAI
2 Circulatory and competitive histories 18
PRASENJIT DUARA
3 Connected histories: the Asian roots of the Scientific
and Industrial Revolutions 42
ARUN BALA
4 Dominant and counter-imaginaries: analyzing India’s
modernities 60
MARTIN FUCHS
ix