These three essays, by Vasudha Dalmia, explore the ways in which Europeans British colonialists and German philosophers and scholars appropriated Indian history, religious scholarship and ritual practice to assert their own relationship to India and Indians and even more so, their relationship to their own past and sense of present days, right and mission. About Author : Vasudha Dalmia is Professor of Hindi and Chair of the Department of South and Southeast Asian Studies, University of California of Berkeley.

Table of Contents:
Contents : Preface Friedrich Max Muller Appropriation of the Vedic Past The Benares Sanskrit College and the constitution of authority in the late nneteenth century Parliamentary papers on widow Immolation, 1821-30