2 Situating Postcolonial Studies

This chapter attempts to place key terms like postcolonialism, Eurocentrism and universalism within a set of historical coordinates, linking the Indian experiences of colonialism, decolonisation and economic development to each other. The different moments of anti- and post-colonial thought constitute a broad zone of engagement that properly grounds the condition of possibility of postcolonialism. In launching this line of thought it is necessary to point out that the postcolonialism familiar to the metropolitan academy is only the latest moment, and is by no means an exclusive representation of postcolonial thought, broadly conceived, past or present. In the Indian context, colonialism in the common parlance refers to the period of British rule, which began piecemeal in the 1760s and ended formally in 1947. Often colonialism is narrowly understood to refer to the conquest by European nation states of polities located outside 'Europe'.Keywords: colonialism; Eurocentrism; Postcolonial; universalism