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"The book examines the works of Akshay Kumar Dutta (1820-1886), who can be seen as ideologically inhabiting the cusp between religion and rationalism - the two most crucial avenues of debate and discussion in the public sphere in nineteenth-century Bengal. While nineteenth-century Bengal has been an important discourse within South Asian history, major figures of reform such as Rammohun Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, and Keshub Chunder Sen have generally been the focus. The book attempts to rescue Dutta from the clutches of academic amnesia, and to locate him as one of the foundational figures of intellectual refashioning among the common albeit educated public in nineteenth-century Bengal"--
List of contents
Introduction; 1. The Discontents of Eclecticism: The Milieu of Akshay Kumar Dutta; 2. The New World of Science: Akshay Dutta as the 'Science Worker'; 3. The Tattwabodhini Period: The Conflicting Contours of Self-Fashioning or Towards a Global History?; 4. Reconstructing Bengali Selfhood: The Conception of Dharma in Akshay and Bankim; 5. On the Question of the Public Sphere: Civic Life, Polity, Dissent, and an Affective Engagement with the Janasamaj; 6. Imagining Bharatvarsha: Identity, History, Nationhood; Conclusion and Further Thoughts; Index.
About the author
Sumit Chakrabarti is Professor in the Department of English at Presidency University, Kolkata. He is a historian straddling the fields of culture studies and postcolonial studies. His areas of expertise are Nineteenth-Century Bengal, intellectual history, and postcolonial and cultural studies. His most recent monograph is titled The Calcutta Kerani and the London Clerk in the Nineteenth Century: Life, Labour, Latitude (Routledge, 2020) and the editor of the forthcoming Oxford World's Classics edition of the short stories of Rabindranath Tagore.
Summary
Examines the works of Akshay Kumar Datta (1820–1886), who can be seen as ideologically inhabiting the cusp between religion and rationalism.
