Indologist Ronald Inden has in the past raised questions about the images of a "traditional" or "medieval" India deployed by colonial scholars and rulers -- "Orientalists" -- and has also argued that a history of "early medieval" India very different from both the colonial and nationalist accounts could be written. This volume is designed as an important first step towards that goal. The authors look closely at three genres of texts that have been crucial to the representations of precolonial India. All three essays challenge not only colonialist scholarship but the attempts by religious nationalists to identify Hinduism as the essence of national identity in Idia and Buddhism as the essence of nationality in Sri Lanka.

"An important book, a major work, that must be read and absorbed by thoseinvolved in scholarship, or any critical enterprise." -- TheIndependent

How does the Western worldrepresent India? To what extent is knowledge of the people and institutions of theIndian sub-continent based on the West's own desires for world hegemony, andfantasies about its rationality? In this controversial and widely-praised book, Inden argues that the West's major depictions of India as the civilization of caste, villages, spiritualism, and divine kings -- and as a land dominated by imaginationrather than reason -- have had the effect of depriving Indians of their capacity torule their world, which has consequently been appropriated by those in the West whowish to dominate it.

First published in 1990, Imagining India is required reading in many university courses. This editioncontains a new introduction.