Introduction: Looking for India in Asia

Summary

The introduction outlines, in broad brushstrokes, the different dimensions of the scholarly and nationalist quest to find India in Asia. In the 1920s and 1930s, Rabindranath Tagore and Greater India Society (GIS) members such as Kalidas Nag and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee toured Southeast Asia to look for ancient India’s Hindu-Buddhist cultural and artistic legacies abroad. But although this quest focused on Java, Bali and Cambodia, the GIS also charted India’s historical influence and cultural imprints in Central and East Asia, as well as Europe, the Pacific world and Indian Ocean realm. Drawing on the travelogues of GIS members and figures loosely affiliated with the society such as the Bengali sannyasin Swami Sadananda, this introduction explores the interwar politics of Greater India. It is argued that the Greater India movement’s quest to rewrite ancient history reconfigured the “idea of India” and became central to anti-colonial, nationalist and internationalist political agendas. Finally, the introduction reflects on the language dynamics of the knowledge networks of Greater India, and outlines the main methodological and historiographical stakes of the book.