Passages through India
Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Indophilia, 1890–1940

Analyses the phenomenon of western Indophilia, its ideological and affective composition, and its political implications in late-colonial British India.

Somak Biswas (Author)

9781009608800, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 February 2025

310 pages
23 x 15 x 1.8 cm, 0.48 kg

'Puts flesh on the bones of the familiar trope of the Indian guru and the Western disciple. It is a useful reminder of the important work of 'white solidarity' in reshaping the global image of India for an anti-colonial project. At the same time, it is clear-eyed about the exclusionary effects of relying on Hindu high culture and a politics of respectability.' Mrinalini Sinha, University of Michigan

Passages Through India offers a study of the phenomenon of Western Indophilia: romanticised engagements around Hindu ideas of India. It argues that affective practices cultivated between major Indian guru-figures (Gandhi, Tagore and Vivekananda) and their white disciples serviced a larger politics of respectability, tied to exigencies of Indian cultural and nationalist politics. Indophile deployments in transnational projects like the abolition of indentured labour and global Hinduism, while anti-colonial, were not quite emancipatory. Such deployments – in Africa, America, Fiji and India – frequently reproduced deep hierarchies around race, class, caste and gender. Unifying distinct strands of western discipleship within a shared tradition of Indophilia, Passages Through India offers a new methodological framework that situates self and subjectivity as central to processes of global mobility and migration.

List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Section I. Introduction: Indophilia and Its Wider Worlds, 1890–1940
1. Languages of Longing: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Letter-Writing
Section II. 2. Home in the World: Indophiles and the Ashram
3. India, Indophiles and Indenture: Cultural Politics of a Transnational Discourse, 1911–1931
Section III. 4. Practices of Discipleship: Vivekananda and His Women Disciples, 1890–1910
5. Vedanta and Its Variables: The Politics of a 'World Religion', 1890–1910
Epilogue: What Settles After
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Asian history [HBJF], History [HB]