Explorations in Modern Bengal C.1800-1900 essays on religion, history and culture Amiya P. Sen

Reprint edition.

Includes bibliographies and index

267About the Book Historically, nineteenth-century Bengal was the where the first crop of a Western-educated Hindu intelligentsia creatively and actively engaged in a two-pronged intellectual enterprise. On the one hand, there was deep introspection that encouraged the overturning of traditional categories of thought and ways of life, and on the other,a growing cultural pride that preferred suitably defending these even under perceptibly changed intellectual and material conditions. Many claimed that while the preceding centuries of Indo-muslim rule had made no difference to the Hindu mind, the Christian West had critically challenged it in intellectual and moral ways. In the course of time, this was also intimately tied to the growing desire to confront colonial modernity on ones own terms.