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Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal

Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence: A Social History of Fear in Colonial Bengal

Paperback

General Political ScienceHinduism

ISBN10: 1478030712
ISBN13: 9781478030713
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: Aug 23 2024
Pages: 232
Weight: 0.75
Height: 0.52 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence, Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and ghost stories played in constituting the modern Indian nation, and the religious ideas seeded therein, as it emerged in dialogue with European science. Bhattacharya introduces readers to the multifarious habits and personalities of Bengal's traditional ghosts and investigates and mourns their eventual extermination. For Bhattacharya, British colonization marked a transition from the older, multifaith folk world of traditional ghosts to newer and more frightening specters. These modern Bengali ghosts, borne out of a new rationality, were homogeneous specters amenable to scientific speculation and invoked at séance sessions in elite drawing rooms. Reading literature alongside the colonial archive, Bhattacharya uncovers a new reordering of science and faith from the middle of the nineteenth century. She argues that these shifts cemented the authority of a rising upper-caste colonial elite who expelled the older ghosts in order to recast Hinduism as the conscience of the Indian nation. In so doing, Bhattacharya reveals how capitalism necessarily reshaped Bengal as part of the global colonial project.

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General Political Science