Constructing Post-Colonial India: National Character and the Doon School

The Doon School, a famous boarding school for boys in India, inculcates in its students the notion that to be post-colonial is to be rational, secular and metropolitan. The School numbers many of India’s political, social and intellectual elite among its former students; its code of conduct for the modern Indian citizen has bee extremely influential. In this detailed and engaging study, Sanjay Srivastava digs deep to find the roots of the ideological construction of post-coloniality in India. The Doon School is the site of his analysis but his work ranges far beyond the School itself. He uses historical sources, ethnographic fieldwork and perspectives from cultural theory to question the prevailing theoretical positions of post-colonial studies, arguing that post-coloniality is meaningless unless it is located in historical, social and cultural space.