The turn towards the history of ideas – and intellectual history, more generally – in modern South Asian history over the past decade has led to the rethinking of the seminal debates in the field, especially on the making of politics, nationalism, and modernity. The impact of postcolonial studies, transnational studies, world history, and global studies has also influenced the theoretical and epistemological shifts within this emergent historiography. As a consequence, these studies have generally moved beyond the territorial boundaries of an imagined community to consider the global and transnational contexts, connections, zones, and influences on the circulation and reception of political ideas in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Moreover, the historiography has exhibited methodological pluralism and disciplinary diversity in its approaches to examining the history of ideas. The result has been the emergence of a burgeoning literature to create a ‘new’ intellectual history of South Asia.
Cosmopolitan thought zones is an important and welcome addition to this body of work. By bringing together essays by some of the leading scholars of South Asia, Sugata Bose and Kris Manjapra have produced a volume that provides key interventions and exemplary models for researching and writing intellectual histories. As the editors point out, the primary objective of the collected edition was to explore the possibilities of a paradigmatic shift in studying the history of ideas during the height of anti-colonial struggles in the years 1890–1950. Hence, the conceptualization of the cosmopolitan thought zones serves as an important heuristic device in rethinking the significance of the global circulation of ideas for the study of modern South Asia.
The volume begins with a fine introduction by Manjapra, in which he explains that for too long historians have understood the movement of ideas as a ‘bilateral exchange’ between Britain and India, without considering the networks, connections, circulations, and zones of interaction that moved beyond a specific type of core–periphery axis or colonial duality. He rightly points out that, while the historical subjects – the intellectuals at the centre of the cases studies in the individual essays – were involved in anti-colonial struggles that were engaged with ideas of cosmopolitanism, the discipline of history has overlooked the dynamism of political thought in India. Manjapra explains that cosmopolitan thought zones were ‘shared transnational public spaces’ in which conversations were pursued ‘between disparate socio-cultural, political and linguistic groups’ for the purpose of ‘solv[ing] problems together in order to address their pressing concerns’ (p. 1). By studying these trans-border movements of people and ideas, he argues that zones of cosmopolitanism were thriving in connecting intellectuals in South Asia with counterparts in the US, Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and throughout the Indian Ocean world.
For Manjapra, studying the history of ideas in these zones provides new insights for interpreting anti-colonial nationalism, which (as he explains) often cannot be detached from the contemporary ‘cosmopolitan visions’ of humanity, justice, peace, and civilization that challenged empire at its core. In fact, he convincingly argues for the need to study nationalism and cosmopolitanism as dual, overlapping processes. He states, ‘if nationalism was the main political project of resistance in the anti-colonial era, cosmopolitanism was the main ethical project’ (p. 2). The result is that not only will studies of nationalism have to take into account the circulation of ideas in cosmopolitan thought zones but studies of cosmopolitanism will also have to consider histories of anti-colonial nationalism. Manjapra concludes that the approach of moving away from studying intellectual history within an imperial axis will allow scholars to consider the social and cultural differences of intellectual thought in comparative contexts, while simultaneously illuminating the forgotten or overlooked solidarities within connected histories of ideas.
Twelve chapters are organized into four thematic parts that address the nature of dynamism in writing a global history of ideas: ‘Theory and methods’, ‘Different universalisms’, ‘Modernist thought zones’, and ‘Histories of connection’. Each part provides empirically rich and theoretically engaged arguments about the complex characteristics of cosmopolitanism in South Asia. Yet readers should be aware that the chapters do not claim to provide a complete history in each part; rather they include arguments that are not only meant to be illustrative and innovative in their approaches to writing intellectual histories but also mark a starting point for further research in the field. It is for these reasons that the edited volume will be useful for both graduate students and scholars in the field. Part I includes essays by A. Sen, S. Tagore, and S. Kaviraj that reconsider the theories and methods of writing intellectual histories of nationalism and cosmopolitanism today by examining the writings of Walter Benjamin, Edward Said, Rabindranath Tagore, and Subas Chandra Bose. In Part II, A. Jalal, Bose, and I. Hofmeyr examine the ideas of religious and diasporic universalisms as part of cosmopolitan conceptions of the modern world. Chapters by D. Menon, B. Zachariah, and Manjapra in Part III examine the impact of futurism, literary modernism, communism, and fascism in South Asia as a way to provide a critique of European universalisms in the twentieth century. In Part IV, essays by N. Slate, M. Prayer, and S. Marchand look at transnational networks connecting Indian intellectuals with Germans, African Americans, and Italians.
It is understandable that the essays in the book simply cannot provide an analysis of all forms of cosmopolitanism; however, I was left wondering about the possibilities of studying the existence of cosmopolitan thought zones within South Asia based on rich, vernacular debates, or the complexities of cosmopolitanism in a pan-Asian context. Equally, what remained unanswered were the theories and methods required to investigate non-literate, non-elite, and subaltern forms of cosmopolitanism. My point in raising these criticisms is to suggest that there remain many possibilities for future research within this dynamic field. Nevertheless, Bose and Manjapra have edited an important book that makes a major contribution to the study of modern South Asia. It is a book that should be read by anyone who is interested in the history of ideas and intellectual history.
