This book examines a regional culture as it was subjected to acute interpretative stress for much of the nineteenth century. This is done through a study of three key facets to contemporary Hindu thought - a possible interplay between the divinely ordained and human history, innovative extensions in the meaning of older terms like 'Dharma', and new moral and cultural theories around select mythical figures and traditionally revered texts.

This book reconstructs the history of print and publishing in colonial Bengal by tracing the unexpected journey of Bharat Chandra’s Bidyasundar, the first book published by a Bengali entrepreneur. The introduction of printing technology by the British in Bengal expanded the scope of publication and consumption of books significantly. This book looks at the developments and the parallel publishing initiatives of that time. It examines local enterprises in colonial Bengal engaged in producing and selling books and explores the ways in which they charted out a cultural space in the 19th century. The work sheds fresh light on book production and the culture of print, and narrates the processes behind the printing of books to understand the multi-layered literary practices they sustained. A valuable addition to the history of publishing in India, this book will be useful to scholars and researchers of South Asian and Indian history, Bengali literature, media and cultural studies, and print and publishing studies. It will also appeal to those interested in the history of Bengal and the Bengali diaspora.

Rammohun Roy (c.1772-1833) is counted amongst the most influential intellectuals of Modern India. But even after a century of debate and enquiry, scholars are still not quite sure whether he was a consistent and articulate political thinker, or a man of intellectual compromise and paradox. This book argues that Rammohun was a consistent thinker who creatively responded to the political challenges of the East India Company's government in India by reading deeply into Sanskritic and Indo-Persian intellectual traditions to develop a political thought of his own. Rammohun's political thought was concerned with three distinct but related themes: i) the restructuring of the East India Company's administration from a distant and invisible government at London to Calcutta; ii) the importance of ethical practice in Bengali society; and iii) the legal and ethical obligation of the Company to be accountable to its subjects. Rammohun consistently stressed the importance of societal ethics and highlighted the consequences of the distance between London and Bengal on governmental accountability. A unity of thought can thus be identified in his work.