Imagining India

How does the Western world represent India? To what extent is knowledge of the people and institutions of the Indian sub-continent based on the West's own desires for world hegemony, and fantasies about its rationality? In this controversial and widely-praised book, Inden argues that the West's major depictions of India as the civilization of caste, villages, spiritualism, and divine kings -- and as a land dominated by imagination rather than reason -- have had the effect of depriving Indians of their capacity to rule their world, which has consequently been appropriated by those in the West who wish to dominate it.--Back cover.