Confluence of Disciplines

Daud Ali’s introduction points out that the essays in this book represent an eventful phase in writings on South Asian history, one marked by the confluence of disciplines, especially history and anthropology. Ronald Inden in fact describes himself as an Indologist, historian and anthropologist of India, all rolled into one. The main focus of his work is medieval South Asia, but his writings range freely over and across pre-colonial and postcolonial pasts, drawing attention to the links between them. Religion, caste and kingship are among the important themes that he has explored in his influential writings. The starting point of Inden’s approach – and the subject of the first essay of this book – is a powerful critique of Orientalist constructs of knowledge. This goes beyond the nexus between knowledge and power to try to penetrate the deepest, most fundamental levels of Orientalist discourse and in fact to lay bare the epistemological basis of all the social sciences that purport to deal with other cultures.