ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides the concept of the colonial encounter from the world of binary thinking. It explores the complexities of the colonial encounter, in which the encounter has yielded to memory and identity formation. The book examines the complexities of cultural categories long taken as fixed, the arbitrary and tyrannical nature of colonial categories. It focuses on the transcript of a lecture by Peter Robb titled 'Memory, place and British memorials in early Calcutta'. The book considers the conflicting ways in which communities have been constructed and remembered in Indian history occupy a central place. It addresses the conceptualization of identity by taking into account writings that address the interrelationships between caste, gender, religion and memory of the colonial encounter. It discusses the memory of a pre-Islamic golden age is often invoked in Hindutva discourse as the memory of a pre colonial golden age.
