Reconstruction of a Nation: British Attempts at Cross-Cutting Researches in Colonial India

The interdisciplinary approaches to scholarly writings have become quite common today in any discipline.
However, visualization of the components not as independent areas of knowledge but as parts of a unified
whole are essential while doing this. All these concerns though extremely important, may become irrelevant in
comparison to a much bigger and broader consideration that underlies all scholarly endeavours. It is the
question of the intention and purpose behind any research activity. Why is a project undertaken and who are
the stakeholders in it? In order to find an answer we need look into the circumstances and contexts that
contribute to such understandings and also make use of hindsight for tracing and evaluating such
development. This paper proposes to use this advantage of hindsight to visit and understand how this very
notion of progress was being perceived by the British in India and what efforts were being taken to
comprehend the alien native society through their attempts at writing the history of the conquered land.