Colonial Indology: Sociopolitics of the Ancient Indian Past, by Dilip K. Chakrabarti, Munshiram Manoharial Publishers, New Dehli, India, 1997

Colonial Indology is the first extended critique of thepremises underlying the Western study of ancient Indian history and archaeology and, assuch, fills a major gap in the history of archaeology. It complements Ronald Inden'sImagining India (1390), a general critique of Western Indological scholarship, whichasserts that it has portrayed India in terms of static essences in a way that minimizesthe creativity of the Indian people. Colonial Indology 's author, therenowned Indian archaeologist Dilip Chakrabarti, who has long been interested in thehistory of archaeology in his homeland, argues that views of Indian history that werecreated to serve the interests of Western colonialism are still accepted not only byWestern scholars but also by many prominent Indian archaeologists who wish to associatethemselves with the international archaeological community, as well as by India'smodernizing establishment who prefer to emphasize their country's mystical, rather thanits historical, past. More recently world attention has been drawn to Indianarchaeologists who have been using their discipline to promote the cause of Hindunationalism