Book review

Nationalist Thought and

Colonial World
By
Partha Chatterjee
 About the Author
Partha Chatterjee is an Indian political scientist and
anthropologist.He was the director of the Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta from 1997 to
2007 and continues as an honorary professor of
political science. He is also a professor of
anthropology and South Asian studies at Columbia
University and a member of the Subaltern Studies
Collective
Chatterjee received the Fukuoka Asian Culture
Prize in 2009.[.
 About the book
In 1986 Partha Chatterjee's
influential work on anticolonial
nationalist discourse presented a
programmatic framework that
viewed nationalism as having
three distinct but related
ideological moments in the
historical emergence of the
postcolonial State.
first was characterized by a cultural
consciousness enabled by
Enlightenment thought but
articulated as "Eastern" culture; the
second, nationalism's power in
mobilizing the population, based on a
notion of the nonpassive "Oriental";
and the final, the hegemonic
resolution of the non-Western nation
with the liberal state and the
postcolonial state's entry into Western
modernity
Contents of the book
● Nationalism as a Problem in the mstory of Political
Ideas
● The Thematic and the Problematic
● The Moment of Departure: Culture and Power in the
Thought of Bankimchandra
● The Moment of Manoeuvre: Gandhi and the Critique
of Civil Society
● The Moment of Arrival: Nehru and the Passive
Revolution
● The Cunning of Reason
 Review of the Book
Partha Chaterjee dissects colonial Indian history into three critical moments:
departure (Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay), manoeuver (Mahatma Gandhi),
and arrival (Jawaharlal Nehru). He successfully complicates any simple
reading of Gandhi as inspirational leader of the Indian National Movement,
engaging the notions of statecraft, symbolic politics, and formative history. A
must read for anyone interested in South Asian Studies.
provide very good explanation of nationalism in the post-colonial conditions.
pedantic discussion on difference between problematic and thematic returns
the favor in the end for investing her time in the book by offering a Marxist
advice to emancipate Reason from the clutches of Capital and,
consequently, alerting the popular struggles to hold those in power (the
State) to account for advancing the cause of the Capital by undermining the
Reason.
Chatterjee argues that nationalism emerges out of a rejection of Orientalist
categorizing of the colonial people as backwards. But that they are still trapped
in the logic emerging from the OccidentThis book serves as a warning to the
scholar that it is more important to reach a conclusion after research, fact-
finding, and actual knowledge production, rather than giving to nationalist
thoughts its ideological unity by relating it to a form of the post-colonial
state.Chatterjee argued that in many colonised nations, an anti-colonial
nationalism had already developed and remained within the non-colonised,
traditional, inner domain where the coloniser had been able to assert little power.
Sources
policy prescriptions of neo,
Weberian modernization theory.
post-Enlightenment
of progress
Benedict Anderson's Imagined
Communities
 Language analysis
Pedagogical The author uses very simple and
Implications understandable language
throughouts the books and explain
each and every concept of the
● Museum visit
● Comparitive method of teaching colonialism in the simple words
● Debates and discussion which can be understed very
● Mind maps easily.
● Posters and infographics
Far easy understanding the author
has provided food notes for every
chapter
Observations
● historical criticism
● Spark of nationalism
● relationship of anticolonial nationalism and
internationalism
● anticolonial nationalism become a statist project
● To what extent has nationalism as an analytical
and normative category
● The colonial world refers to the post-colonial
world
Conclusion
● in terms of my thesis, useful in a general theory way.
● dense and somewhat difficult,
● the book is engaging
● much of the book assumes the reader has a basic grounding in postcolonial and
nationalist theory as well as a thorough grounding in studies of gandhi and the
formation of the indian nation-state.
● Framework for stages of revolution might be useful in examining Ghanaian history.
● pathbreaking analysis of the contradictory character of anticolonial nationalism.
 Glossary of terms
● Indictment: a thing that serves to illustrate that a system or
situation is bad and deserves to be condemned.
● Nihilism- from Latin nihil 'nothing') is a philosophy, or family
of views within philosophy, that rejects generally accepted or
fundamental aspects of human existence,such as objective
truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning.
● Fervent- having or displaying a passionate intensity
● irepungent-n conflict or incompatible with.
 Rating
The boon is a very nice book which
is very useful to understand the The critical approach of the book is
modern Indian concepts very appreciable
But it is a bit difficult to
the book can be given a rating of
comprehend
The summary of the chapters 3.5/5
Done by:
Chikkala Likhitha
B.A.B.Ed
U01GX21A0006
Thank you!