Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India and the Colonial Archive

Professor Javed Majeed (King's College London)

Abstract:

In this talk Javed Majeed examines how Grierson’s Linguistic Survey of India constitutes a particular kind of archive which raises specific questions about the production of knowledge in colonial India, its epistemology of uncertainty, and its creative instabilities. The power of the colonial archive in the LSI lies not in its sense of mastery but precisely in its opposite.

Biography Javed Majeed:

Professor Javed Majeed is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at King's College London. He is the author of numerous books: Muhammad Iqbal: Islam, Aesthetics and Postcolonialism (London, New York and Delhi: Routledge, 2008); Autobiography, Travel and Postnational Identity. Nehru, Gandhi and Iqbal (Basingstoke UK and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); and Ungoverned Imaginings. James Mill’s The History of British India and Orientalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). He is currently completing a monograph on G.A. Grierson and the Linguistic Survey of India .