Local Selfhood, Global Turns: Akshay Kumar Dutta and Bengali Intellectual History in the Nineteenth Century

The book examines the works of Akshay Kumar Dutta (1820-1886), who can be seen as ideologically inhabiting the cusp between religion and rationalism - the two most crucial avenues of debate and discussion in the public sphere in nineteenth-century Bengal. While nineteenth-century Bengal has been an important discourse within South Asian history, major figures of reform such as Rammohun Roy, Debendranath Tagore, Iswarchandra Vidyasagar, or Keshub Chunder Sen have generally been the focus. The book attempts to rescue Dutta from the clutches of academic amnesia, and to locate him as one of the foundational figures of intellectual refashioning among the common albeit educated public in nineteenth-century Bengal.

這本書探討了阿克沙伊·庫馬爾·杜塔（1820-1886）的作品，他可以被視為意識形態上處於宗教和理性主義之間的交界點，這兩者是19世紀孟加拉公共領域中最重要的辯論和討論途徑。儘管19世紀的孟加拉在南亞歷史中佔有重要地位，但改革的主要人物如拉莫洪·羅伊、德本德拉納特·塔戈爾、伊斯瓦爾·昌德拉·維迪亞薩加爾或凱舒布·昌德拉·森通常是焦點。這本書試圖從學術遺忘的魔爪中拯救杜塔，並將他定位為19世紀孟加拉普通但受過教育的公眾中知識重塑的基礎人物之一。