Visions of Greater India
Transimperial Knowledge and Anti-Colonial Nationalism, c.1800–1960

Shows how the transimperial knowledge networks of 'Greater India' energized the interwar nationalist, internationalist and anti-colonial imagination in British India.

Yorim Spoelder (Author)

9781009403191, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 22 May 2025

346 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm, 0.501 kg

'Visions of Greater India is a compelling treatise on the way hypotheses and theories about the past get internalized as narratives of national pride in the present. The example of India as 'great' - geographically, spiritually, and culturally - is a case in point and is likely to become a model for analyses of how other nation-states construe their greatness.' Soni Wadhwa, Asian Review of Books

'Greater India' was a transimperial, Indocentric research paradigm that informed the colonial recovery of the ancient past in Central and Southeast Asia. Ancient India was postulated as the fount of an expansive classicism – an actor in world history on a par with ancient Greece and Rome. Under the Greater India movement, the scholarly quest for 'India in Asia' became tied to anti-colonial, pedagogical, nationalist and Asianist agendas. Yet although it provided a potent anti-colonial imaginary, the movement also bolstered visions of Indian exceptionalism and energized Hindu nationalist ideas of India as a civilizing, colonizing power. Speaking directly to debates that define and divide India today, this is essential reading for those interested in the legacies of Orientalist scholarship and interwar visions of Indian internationalism. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

Introduction: Looking for India in Asia
Part I. The knowledge networks of Greater India: 1. Shifting horizons: Buddhist archaeology and the quest for Serindia
2. Finding India in Southeast Asia: Early Indocentric approaches
3. Transimperial knowledge networks and the research paradigm of Greater India
4. British India and the quest for a new Orientalism: The Greater India Society
5. 'Colonial art' and the reconfiguration of aesthetic space
Epilogue: The knowledge networks of Greater India in the postcolonial era
Part II. The interwar politics of Greater India: 6. Connecting Orientalism and internationalism: Tagore, Indian Asianism and the historical imagination
7. Disawoving Indian exceptionalism: Sarkar, 'Modern Greater India' and the Hindu nationalist imagination
8. A new Nalanda in Bolpur: Visva-Bharati and the quest for a global humanism
Conclusion: Greater India as a political discourse in the interwar period
Conclusion
Epilogue: The afterlives of Greater India
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]