Modernities in Asian Perspective

The book deals with the relentless effort of becoming modern that haunts the East; its omnipresence can be felt in every sphere of social fabric. Social phenomenon is judged from a preconceived notion of modernity, which is essentially a Western construct. This volume on the contrary has put forward the responses of the East in a colonial, semi-colonial and even post-colonial setting to the given standards of modernity in the conventional Western paradigm, thereby adding to the heterogeneity of the modern theoretical discourse. The essays have emphasized on the theoretical binary of passive acceptance and active borrowing. They, while trying to re-contextualize the borrowed notion, actually try to explore something distinctively modern, yet recognizably different from the Western one.