HIS 460: Fall 2007                 Guidelines for Report on Section III 

This report is due on OCTOBER 23^rd, in class. The requirements are the same as before, that it should be between four to six pages of typed prose (double spaced, 12 point font, 1 inch margins all around).

I must emphasize yet, again, that I am looking for a serious engagement with the readings for this part of the course as THIS IS MY ONLY WAY OF KNOWING THAT YOU ARE READING, THINKING ABOUT, AND COMPREHENDING THE WEEK’S READINGS.

The review, following the readings and our discussion will be about religion and modernity in the context of British colonialism in India. I would like you to think about this relationship as a dialogical one, where religion is shaped by, and in turn shapes modernity. This is a relationship which in many ways parallels the colonial one, where rather than a simple impact-response model, we have been trying to understand the ways in which the colonial encounter shaped both the colony and the metropole.

As before, what I give you below are GUIDELINES to help you write a meaningful review of the readings and discussion in this part of the course. I certainly want you to address the main question for this review, which I present below. The others are subsidiary questions which I think will help in addressing this one. The main question I want you to address is:

To what extent does the colonial encounter inflect religiosity in Britain and India, and to what extent do religious concerns, in turn, in shape the nature of the “modern” that is produced by the colonial encounter? What can examining this relationship allow us to conclude about “religion and modernity”?

Your review should focus on the period from the eighteenth through to the twentieth century and take into account data from all six chapters, but particularly chapter two through six of van der Veer’s book. As part of engaging with this question, you may want to think about the following as well:

1. How does British colonialism “create” religion(s) in India?

2. How does religion facilitate or undermine empire?

3. In what ways do Indian ideas about religion influence ideas and practices of religion/spritiuality in Britain?

4. To what extent can we separate science and religion in a study of the colonial encounter between Britain and India?

5. How does religion mediate race in the colonial encounter?