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In Ghostly Past, Capitalist Presence, Tithi Bhattacharya maps the role that Bengali ghosts and ghost stories played in constituting the modern Indian nation, and the religious ideas seeded therein, as it emerged in dialogue with European science. Bhattacharya introduces readers to the multifarious habits and personalities of Bengal's traditional ghosts and investigates and mourns their eventual extermination. For Bhattacharya, British colonization marked a transition from the older, multifaith folk world of traditional ghosts to newer and more frightening specters. These "modern" Bengali ghosts, borne out of a new rationality, were homogeneous specters amenable to "scientific" speculation and invoked at sÉance sessions in elite drawing rooms. Reading literature alongside the colonial archive, Bhattacharya uncovers a new reordering of science and faith from the middle of the nineteenth century. She argues that these shifts cemented the authority of a rising upper-caste colonial elite who expelled the older ghosts in order to recast Hinduism as the conscience of the Indian nation. In so doing, Bhattacharya reveals how capitalism necessarily reshaped Bengal as part of the global colonial project.
Contents
A Note on Conventions vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. Uncanny Histories: Ghosts, Fear, and Reason in Colonial Bengal 1
1. "Undisciplined, Playful and Yet Bhadra": Old Ghosts and Their Advocates in an Age of Enlightenment 22
2. The New Spirits 55
3. Deadly Spaces: Haunted Homes and Haunting Histories 82
4. Enacting Ghosts: New Spirits, New Rituals 97
5. National Ghosts, Ghostly Nations 130
Conclusion. Thinking about Ends and Beginnings 155
Notes 159
Bibliography 187
Index 203
