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Constructing the ‘Nationalist’ Subject
Chandalika constructs a “nationalist subject” capable of annihilating caste, while simultaneously implementing new standards of morality rooted in casteist and sexist ideologies.
In his speech at the House of Commons on 10 July 1833, Thomas Babington Macaulay spoke about Indian culture and society in the following manner:
I see a government anxiously bent on the public good. Even in its errors I recognise a paternal feeling towards the great people committed to its charge. I see toleration strictly maintained: yet I see bloody and degrading superstitions gradually losing their power. I see the morality, the philosophy, the taste of Europe, beginning to produce a salutary effect on the hearts and understandings of our subjects. I see the public mind of India, that public mind which we found debased and contracted by the worst forms of political and religious tyranny, expanding itself to just and noble views of the ends of government and of the social duties of man.