Book Reviews – The Colonial State: Theory and Practice, Primus

Sabyasachi Bhattacharya, The Colonial State: Theory and Practice, Primus, Delhi, 2016, 228 pages, Rs 1495

Professor Sabyasachi Bhattacharya investigates the concept ‘colonial’ and the definition of ‘colonial state’ in this book. He explores various aspects of state sovereignty and subjecthood by deploying analytical tools that are critical of a historian’s empiricism as well as the ahistorical abstraction of a theorist. The concrete and the abstract, practice and theory are sought to be woven together, as he puts it, through both ‘discourse of state theory and narrative of state practices’ (Bhatacharya: vii) in analysing the colonial state.