Over the last twenty years there has been a proliferation of critical scholastic material on India which has both challenged prevailing assumptions and opened up new areas of discourse. The last decade, to quote Burton Stein, has certainly been 'a decade of efflorescence' (1990: 125).
In this work I do not attempt a comprehensive overview of all the themes in the analysis of Indian history and society that have emerged over the last twenty years. My discussion is selective but does cover a wide range of debates, trends and issues. The aim, then, is to explore some of the major debates that have preoccupied scholars in the disciplines of History and the Social Sciences. While the focus is on theoretical trends and innovations I do not intend to engage in theoretical abstractionism. My aim is to integrate theoretical analysis with substantive illustrative material. This will be done through an examination of theoretical discourses on Marx and Asiaticism; modes of production and the Indian social formation; India and the emergence of a world system perspective; the subaltern project; and structures of patriarchy and constructions of gender.
Over the period under review, the critique of what is depicted by Edward Said (1978) and Bryan Turner (1978) as 'Orientalism', has gained momentum. In each chapter, I shall assess the impact of this critique upon the various debates. In order to consider how authors of different discourses have attempted to confront and transcend Orientalism, it is first necessary to examine the way(s) in which the Orientalist discourse has been constructed. The encounter with Orientalism and the critique of that discourse must be contextualised within a broader and related debate concerning modernism and post-modernism. Arguably, Orientalism is a modernist project, while many of the writers engaging in the critique are inspired by ideas and methods associated with the post-modernist work of Foucault (on discursive practices) and Derrida (on deconstructionism). These authors will be introduced into the discussion only in so far as their work impacts upon the critique of Orientalism in that the protagonists of the critique deploy the notion of 'discourse' and 'deconstructionism', and focus on the processes of exclusion whereby actors are denied agency.
The changes in approach and focus which have taken place over the last two decades do not amount to a paradigmatic shift (from 'modes of production' to 'post-modernism'). What has occurred is a sharpening and expansion in the articulation and expression of the critique of Orientalism. This has resulted in a rich diversity of discursive practices. While Marx' formulation of the Asiatic mode of production (AMP) and his writings on India are integral to a modernist Orientalist tradition, scholars engaging in critical debate have either rejected the AMP (e. g. Anderson: 1974, Bhadra: 1989, Hindess and Hirst: 1975, O'Leary: 1989); or attempted to reconstruct the concept (e.g. Currie: 1984, Krader: 1975, Sawer: 1977). In both instances, the critique of Marx' Orientalism is made explicit. Substantive analyses on the mode of production in Indian history have challenged Marx' stagnationist and au-tarchic conception of the Indian village and absolutist state (Currie: 1982, Gough: 1969, Habib: 1985, Stein: 1985). Some critics have gone further (Mukhia: 1981, Habib: 1985) in attempting to transcend the Eurocentric categories of AMP and feudal mode of production (FMP), in order to develop categories and typologies appropriate for analysing pre-colonial India. The critique of Orientalism, witnessed in two decades of debate on the AMP and modes of production in Indian history, is manifested in the current and ongoing debate on the possibility of reconstructing a 'post-Orientalist' materialist analysis of Indian history and society (Prakash: 1990, 1992, O'Hanlon and Washbrook: 1992). This runs concurrently with the world system perspective (WSP) endeavours (Bayly: 1990, Prabhakaran: 1990) to transcend both narrow regional focus of classical 'Indology' and the Eurocentricism of classical West-ern world system theory.
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