Anjan Chakrabarti

Orientalism and the New Global: The Example of India

N owadays we are often told that the third world is dead. This underlies another proposition that, with the third world as the Other disappearing, the Orientalist framework is no longer relevant. We consider the pronounced death of the third world and the implied irrelevance of the Orientalist framework as theoretically weak, premature, and politically counterproductive. With the new global order emerging, the third world gets displaced as its external Other into a new plane. We trace the economic history of India and deconstruct the mainstream Indian development paradigm to reveal this emerging contour of Orientalism. Specifically we attempt to read the economic history of India and its transition through different moments of Orientalism, moments that are distinct but each nevertheless help one space—the West, North, or New Global Order—define itself and protract its superiority by producing an external Other.