Colonial Discourse
& Indian Selfhood
Interrogating the texts that shaped how India came to know itself.
About the Archive
This archive brings together three bodies of colonial-era writing that, read side by side, reveal how India was described, classified, and ultimately reimagined. Missionary texts — from Ward to Duff — constructed Hinduism as superstition in need of Christian salvation. Bureaucratic records — census reports, official surveys — codified these judgments into the neutral language of governance. And reform voices — Phule, among others — internalized this very critique, reworking it into a new vocabulary of self-understanding from which modern Indian selfhood would emerge.
Explore the extracts thematically to trace how ideas about caste, religion, and civilization moved between these three worlds — and how they continue to shape Indian self-perception today.
Featured Extracts
The divinities of the Trimurti, having heard of her, became so greatly enamoured that they resolved upon robbing her of her virginity, which she had till then treasured with so much care. To attain th...
At the commencement of their idolatry the Hindus confined their worship to visible objects, such as the sun, the moon, the stars, and the elements. In those early times they felt no need of making ido...
In short, we find in the Hindu books a mere tissue of contradictions relating to the Trimurti, and the absurd details which are related in connexion with each are even more inconsistent. The point on ...
The idolatry of India, which is of a much grosser kind, has for the object of its worship the material substance itself. It is to water, to fire, to the most common household implements; in a word, to...