Book Review: Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India (2011) Indira Sengupta & Daud Ali, editors

Abstract

Knowledge Production, Pedagogy, and Institutions in Colonial India, edited by Sengupta and Ali, belongs to a body of literature that attempts to provide scholarly understandings of colonial societies and imperial history through the lens of colonial knowledge. Colonial knowledge is conceived as the form and content of knowledge that was produced out of and facilitated the process of colonization. The idea that colonialism could be understood by focusing on the production and dissemination of knowledge that accompanied it owes much to Edward Said’s Orientalism, published in 1978, which foregrounded representation as a key aspect of imperialism. The idea of representation made possible the understanding that colonial authorities exercised power over colonized people not only through military conquest or economic dominance but also through the command of knowledge that they had over the colonized people. Therefore, scholarly work inspired by Said (1978) views colonialism as much a cultural project as a military or an economic one.