This book explores the localisation of modernity in late colonial India. As a case study, it focuses on the hitherto untold colonial history of Khalsa College, Amritsar, a pioneering and highly influential educational institution founded in the British Indian province of Punjab in 1892 by the religious minority community of the Sikhs. Addressing topics such as politics, religion, rural development, militarism or physical education, the study shows how Sikh educationalists and activists made use of and localised communal, imperial, national and transnational discourses and knowledge. Their modernist visions and schemes transcended both imperialist and mainstream nationalist frameworks and networks. In its quest to educate the modern Sikh scientific, practical, disciplined and physically fit the college navigated between very local and global claims, opportunities and contingencies, mirroring modernitys ambivalent simultaneity of universalism and particularism.

Michael Philipp Brunner is a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation and a Visiting Scholar at Tufts University, USA. He completed his PhD at the Institute of History at ETH Zurich.

1 Introduction: Gurus, Grades and the Globe: Khalsa College, Education and Colonial Modernity in South Asia.- 2 The Politics of Education: Socio-Religious Transformation, Politicised Sikhism and Limited Nationalism at Khalsa College, c. 1880-1947.- 3 Conceiving Modern Sikhism: Religious Instruction, Scientific Religion and Sikh History at Khalsa College.- 4 Teaching Development: Scientific Agriculture and Rural Reconstruction at Khalsa College.- 5 Disciplining the Martial Sikh: Physical Education, Youth Organizations and Military at Khalsa College.- 6 Conclusion.