Constructing Post-Colonial India: National Character and the Doon School (Culture and Communication in Asia) Book

The Doon School, a famous boarding school for boys in India, inculcates in its students the notion that to be post-colonial is to be rational, modern, secular and metropolitan. The School numbers many of India's political, social and intellectual elite among its former students; its code of conduct for the modern Indian citizen has been extremely influential. Sanjay Srivastava questions the ways in which post-colonial identity is constructed in India. He focuses on the Doon School as the site of his analysis, but his work ranges far beyond the School itself. Srivastava uses historical sources, ethnographic fieldwork and perspectives from cultural theory to confront the social, cultural and historical location of the often abstract notion of post-coloniality. In so doing, he contests the prevailing theoretical positions of post-colonial studies.Read More