Course Content

This course is divided into two main parts. In part 1 (weeks 1–7), we shall examine the theoretical foundations of the idea of race. We shall trace the idea in the writings of early theoreticians of race and examine the considerations and influences that led them to formulate the concept.

In part 2 (weeks 8–12), we shall jointly read a selection of readings. These readings show how the idea of race—specifically, the distinction between a superior white race called “the Aryans” and an inferior “negroid” race—shaped Indologists’ views of Indian language, religion, literature, and civilization. We will conclude the course (weeks 13–15) by considering how Indian statesmen, activists, and historians absorbed the idea of race and used it for political projects of reform, revolution, and emancipation, or of legitimation, classification, and objectification.

Our textbook will be Peter K. J. Park’s Africa, Asia, and the History of Philosophy: Racism in the Formation of the Philosophical Canon, 1780–1830, which we will supplement with the original writings of Schlegel, Lassen, and other German Indologists excerpted and translated in Vishwa Adluri and Joydeep Bagchee, Aryans through History: A Reader.