SUMMARY:

Gyan Prakash accepts the interpretation of the cosmopolitan origins of the supra as formulated in the article by Harsha Ram, but criticizes Ram’s reliance on Partha Chatterjee’s idea of the “spiritual” domain of the nation as some preexisting condition preceding colonization. Prakash suggests that Chatterjee merely reproduces the nationalist discourse by reestablishing dichotomies such as inner/outer, spiritual/material, and capital/community and placing them outside the sphere of modernity. Prakash insists that in the Indian tradition these notions were thoroughly elaborated and pondered in relation to modernity. He accuses Chatterjee and, by extension, Ram of failing to acknowledge the implications of the hybrid origins of those dichotomies. Prakash claims that when Chatterjee is read via Homi Bhabha, the nationalist “inner” and “spiritual” turn out to be constructed from a hybrid formation much like the supra.