Knowing Asia, Being Asian

Sarvani Gooptu is Professor of Asian Literary and Cultural Studies at Netaji Institute for Asian Studies, Kolkata, India. Previously she worked in the History Department at Calcutta Girls’ College, Calcutta University, as Associate Professor and Head (1997–2016). Her main areas of research are nationalism and culture in the colonial and post-colonial periods. Among her publications are The Actress in the Public Theatres of Calcutta (2015), The Music of Nationhood: Dwijendralal Roy of Bengal (2018) and two co-edited volumes On Modern Indian Sensibilities: Culture, Politics, History with Ishita Banerjee-Dube (2018) and The Regional Great Game in the Indian Ocean and India’s Evolving Maritime Strategy (2020) with Vivek Mishra. She has published extensively in national and international journals on diverse topics like minority communities of Calcutta; biographical works on leading Indian men and women; Asia in Bengali journals and literature; India’s relations with China, Japan and Burma; women’s travel narratives; Buddhist pilgrimages in the past and present in Asia; and Gandhi and Bengal. She has been a Council Member for 21 years at Netaji Research Bureau and is also Council member and Secretary of the Indian Association of Asian and Pacific Studies.

Introduction 1. Othering the Self through Sahitya Patrikas 2. Travelling in Asian lands: male gaze 3. A woman’s perspective: writing for women, about women and by women 4. Beyond the classroom: Teaching about Asia in children’s magazines 5. Cultural Intimacies: The Quest for an Asian Art and Culture 6. Buddhist ideas and pilgrimage as a means of connectivity 7. Nationalist discourse and locating the nation in the world 8. United Asia: Hope and Illusion 9. Institutionalising dreams: Tagore, Bose, Nehru