Passages through India

Somak Biswas is Junior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, London. He works on the intersections of South Asia, Britain, imperial and global history. He is also a member of the Global History and Culture Centre, University of Warwick.

• List of Figures; Acknowledgements; Section I. Introduction: Indophilia and Its Wider Worlds, 1890–1940; 1. Languages of Longing: Indian Gurus, Western Disciples and the Politics of Letter-Writing; Section II. 2. Home in the World: Indophiles and the Ashram; 3. India, Indophiles and Indenture: Cultural Politics of a Transnational Discourse, 1911–1931; Section III. 4. Practices of Discipleship: Vivekananda and His Women Disciples, 1890–1910; 5. Vedanta and Its Variables: The Politics of a 'World Religion', 1890–1910; Epilogue: What Settles After; Bibliography; Index.

'Biswas explores both the social geographies and the cultural practices of radical devotees in pursuit of earthly transcendence and revolutionary politics, producing a lively account of utopian communities stitched together by spiritual desire and preserved in a rich and vivid archive of letters that testify to the power of affective politics in the making of global history.' Antoinette Burton, University of Illinois