This archives’ role in the subsequent writings on Indian history and historiography are valuable. In another essay, ‘The Policing of Tradition’, Dirks shows how the category of ‘brahman’ was defined by a variety of interventions by colonial authorities. His work is also valuable as a comment by a serious historian on the historiography of India as well. In another essay, ‘In Near Ruins’, Dirks casts a broad look on the twentieth century from a postcolonial perspective.
Sorties in Art, History, Politics and Culture
Asma Rasheed
THE FIRST FIRANGIS: REMARKABLE STORIES OF HEROES, HEALERS, CHARLATANS, COURTESANS & OTHER FOREIGNERS WHO BECAME INDIAN by Jonathan Gil Harris Aleph Book Company, New Delhi, 2015, 317 pp., 495
October 2015, volume 39, No 10