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 duty, right and mission.In these European attempts to orient India to their own designs, justifications and senses of moral worth, or "enlightened thinking", Dalmia reveals the complex negotitations between Indian And British forms of knowledgeand practice.