This book explores the life and times of the pioneering Indian sociologist Benoy Kumar Sarkar. It locates him simultaneously in the intellectual history of India and the political history of the world in the twentieth century. It focuses on the development and implications of Sarkar’s thinking on race, gender, governance and nationhood in a changing context.
A penetrating portrait of Sarkar and his age, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, sociology, and politics.
Introduction 1. An Indian Race 2. Wars of the Emasculated 3. A Romance of the State. Conclusion. Bibliography. Index
Biography
Satadru Sen is Associate Professor of South Asian History at the City University of New York. He is the author of Savagery and Colonialism in the Indian Ocean: Power, Pleasure and the Andaman Islanders (2010), and other works on the history of discipline and race in modern India.
Sen develops a sensitive and rich critique of a cosmopolitan, modernist right-wing nationalist whose nationalism incorporated Bengali, Indian, and anti-British layers, cohabiting with western nationalisms and the world. [He] disentangles each strand with admirable suppleness and precision. An excellent book. — Sumit Sarkar, former Professor of History, University of Delhi
A bold and stimulating piece of intellectual history. Sen restores one of the most fascinating, if neglected, figures of modern Indian history to current academic debates on Indian nationalism and its multifaceted global entanglements. — Harald Fischer-Tiné, Professor of Modern Global History, ETH Zürich
Satadru Sen succeeds brilliantly in explaining Sarkar’s complex views and in situating them in their historical and cultural contexts . . . a valuable effort to broaden and complicate the history of Indian nationalism. — Chandak Sengoopta, Professor of History, University of London
Sarkar emerges from Satadru Sen's engaging account not as a giant cardboard cut-out figure, but as a complex thinker of nevertheless gigantic proportions. — Benjamin Zachariah, University of Heidelberg
