The Cambridge Companion to Rammohun Roy

Dipesh Chakrabarty is Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the college at University of Chicago. He is also the founding member of the journal Subaltern Studies, a consulting editor of Critical Inquiry, a founding editor of Postcolonial Studies, and has served on the editorial boards of the American Historical Review and Public Culture. His research combines the social history of modern India with postcolonial historiography in works that influence the field at large. His awards include the Distinguished Alumnus Award from Indian Institute of Management, Toynbee Prize, Tagore Memorial Prize, and honorary doctorates from the University of London, University of Antwerp, and the École Normale Supérieure, Paris. He is the author of Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal 1890–1940 (2000). Rosinka Chaudhuri is Director and Professor of Cultural Studies at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. She was inaugural Mellon Professor of the Global South at Oxford University, 2017–18, and has held visiting positions at St Hugh's College, Oxford, King's College, London, Delhi University, Cambridge University and Columbia University. She has authored Gentlemen Poets in Colonial Bengal: Emergent Nationalism and the Orientalist Project (Seagull: 2002), Freedom and Beef-Steaks: Colonial Calcutta Culture (Orient Blackswan: 2012) and The Literary Thing: History, Poetry and the Making of a Modern Cultural Sphere (Oxford University Press: 2013, Peter Lang: 2014). Tanika Sarkar is a historian of women's histories and social movements in colonial and post-colonial India. She retired as the Chair of Modern History, at the Centre for Historical Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University having previously taught at Indraprastha College and St. Stephen's College in New Delhi, India. She is the author of numerous books including, Bengal 1928-34 : The Politics of Protest (Oxford, 1987); Hindu Wife, Hindu Nation: Community, Religion and Cultural Nationalism (Permanent Black, Indiana University Press and Hurst, 2001), Rebels, Wives, Saints: Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times (Permanent Black and Seagull, 2009), Words to Win: The Making of a Modern Autobiography (Kali for Women, 1999; Zubaan Books, 2014) Hindu Nationalism in India (Oxford University Press, 2021).

• Acknowledgements; Introduction Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rosinka Chaudhuri and Tanika Sarkar; Part I. Rammohun Roy in History and Memory: 1. Rammohun as Signifier Amit Chaudhuri; 2. The Liberal Rammohun Roy: A History of Indian Intellectual History Nazmul Sultan; 3. Rammohun Roy: 'A Mere Landlord'? Disputes, Debates, Disagreements Rosinka Chaudhuri; 4. Imperial Emissary: Raja Ram Mohan Roy's Fateful Passage to England Sudipta Sen; 5. Rammohun Roy: His Songs and Contribution to Bengali Music Amit Das; 6. Rammohun Roy in Bengali Muslim Memory and History Mohammad Azam; Part II. Rammohun Roy and Religion's Reason: 7. Rethinking Rammohun's Vedanta: Some Contemporary Reflections Amiya P. Sen; 8. Rammohun Roy the Modern Vedāntī Dermot Killengley; 9. Rammohun Roy, Celebrity Unitarian Lynn Zastoupil; 10. Modernity and Monotheism: The Literary Moment of Raja Rammohan Roy Anustup Basu; 11. Reason and Rammohun Roy Rudrangshu Mukherjee; Part III. Rammohun Roy, an Argumentative Indian?: 12. Between Advocate and Opponent: The Sati Debate in Colonial Bengal Paul B. Courtright; 13. The Spiritual, the Religious and the Secular in Rammohan Roy's Public Hermeneutic Praxis Rahul Govind; 14. Rammohun versus Kashinath: Gender, Scripture and Custom in Early-Nineteenth-Century Debates on Widow Burnings Tanika Sarkar; 15. Rammohun's 'Moral Revolution': Neo-prescriptivism and Normative Controversy in Early-Nineteenth-Century Kolkata Thomas Newbold; 16. Rajopanishad: On Rammohun Roy and Translation Brian A. Hatcher; Notes on Contributors; Index.