The book argues that the Survey brings to light a different kind of colonial knowledge, whose relationship to power was much more ambiguous than has hitherto been assumed for colonial projects in modern India. It also highlights the contribution of Indians to the creation of colonial knowledge about South Asia as a linguistic region. Indians were important collaborators and participants in the Survey, and they helped to create the monumental knowledge of India as a linguistic region which is embodied in the Survey.
This volume, like its companion volume Nation and Region in Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India, will be a great resource for scholars and researchers of linguistics, language and literature, history, political studies, cultural studies and South Asian studies.
Javed Majeed is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at King’s College London, UK, and has held appointments at SOAS, University of London, and Queen Mary, University of London. He has published widely on the intellectual and literary history of modern South Asia. His previous books include Ungoverned Imaginings: James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism (1992), Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity: Gandhi, Nehru and Iqbal (2007), and Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics and Postcolonialism (2009).