This book explores the social and cultural histories of India, focusing on cultural encounters and representations of subaltern communities from the seventeenth to the twenty-first century.

Introduction Part 1: Investigating Cultural Practices, Fashioning Identities, and Travel Literature 1 John Locke's India: Religion, Revelation, and Enthusiasm 2 Encountering the 'Sati': Early Modern English Travel Narratives and the Politics of Exoticization 3 Indian Travel Writing in the Age of Empire: Mobility and Cosmopolitan Nationalism Part 2: Alternate Histories, Divergent Concepts, and Subaltern Spaces of Resistance 4 Patriots in Kala Pani? Writing Subaltern Resistance into the Nationalist Memory 5 Reading Bhikshu Bodhanand's Mool Bharatvasi aur Arya: Reflections on an Alternative History of the 'Beginnings' of Indian Civilization 6 Enacting Resistance in History and Fiction: Counter-narratives of Tribal Historiography in Mahasweta Devi's Writings 7 "We must create a history of India in living terms": Patrick Geddes and Aspects of Sister Nivedita's Writings on Indian History Part 3: Writing History and Engaging with Peripheral Genres 8 Cassetted Emotions: Intimate Songs and Marital Conflicts in the Age of Pravasi (1970-1990) 9 Framing History, Precarity, and Trauma: A Study of Nandita Das's Firaaq