Description: This book situates the worldview of Isvarachandra Vidyasagar within the context of colonial encounter in Bengal, paying particular attention to the convergences within vernacular discourse of bourgeois and brahmanical norms of morality and religion. In training and appearance a brahmin scholar, Vidyasagar was also a prominent social and educational reformer. The work begins by tracing his origins in rural Bengal, the dynamics of education in colonial Calcutta, and his work promoting and improving vernacular education. The second part of the book analyzes Vidyasagar's school-book pedagogy in terms of the convergence of European bourgeois morality and Sanskritic norms of worldly improvement. The socio-religious dimensions of his worldview are explored in the last part of the book, with special attention given to his relationship to the reformist work of the Brahmo Samaj.

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