Biography
I work on ideas of time and temporality in colonial India, roughly, between 1830s and 1920, focusing on the sphere of education. I wish to investigate how the temporal landscape of indigenous education, defined by heterogenous social rhythms, were transformed by the disciplinary mechanisms of new education policies introduced by the colonial government. I locate my study at the intersection of intellectual history and the history of education to reflect on the ways in which imperial discourses, like that of ‘progress’ and ‘improvement’, that circulated through modernization narratives around the world from the late eighteenth century onwards manifested themselves at the level of everyday life through the regulation of time in schools and colleges in colonial cities. My project seeks to connect normative ideas travelling in the empire with everyday practice in specific locations in the colony. How did a student or a teacher from Calcutta or Bombay, learning about or teaching a text, published in England, that prescribes punctuality/timeliness in the classroom respond to a newly introduced timetable or vacation cycle? How did these actors embody the new temporal norms that sought to re-order their everyday? I hope to use comparativist methods to bring regions within India and empires around the world in dialogue to examine how global, universalizing notions, get transformed through practice.