Modern Asian Studies 52, 1 (2018) pp. 62–98. C  Cambridge University Press 2018 doi:10.1017/S0026749X17000324 Imitation, Then and Now: On the emergence of philanthropy in early colonial Calcutta * BRIAN A. HATCHER Department of Religion, Tufts University, USA Email: Brian.hatcher@tufts.edu Abstract The goal of this article is to provide conceptual and historical orientation useful for thinking about the emergence of philanthropy in modern South Asia. Conceptually, the article suggests the need to approach the expression of philanthropy in early colonial Bengal in terms of processes of imitation. To do so, we must overcome the stigma attached to the idea of imitation within both nationalist and post-colonial thought. In the particular context of early colonial Calcutta, local actors entered into intimate relationships with Europeans and these relationships provided occasions to borrow, translate, and retool a range of ideas and practices relevant to new modes of public charity. The importance of attending to historical context is suggested by reading such early colonial developments against the grain of late nineteenth-century perspectives—a time when Bengalis grew anxious about cultural imitation. Rather than deferring to these late-colonial anxieties over imitation, we need to situate them within a critically informed historical framework. To do this, the present article draws on the writings of the Br¯ ahmo intellectual Rajnarain Bose, who pondered the relationship between an earlier colonial moment (‘then’) and his own late-colonial ‘now’. Close reading of Bose allows us to plumb the nature of late-colonial anxiety about cultural borrowing while opening up a new perspective on imitation and intimacy in early colonial Bengal that is not predicated on the teleology of the late-colonial modern. Introduction A large desk, a voluntary association, a public address, a young man jotting notes in a composition book, a set of proceedings published * This article has benefited from valuable critical feedback and bibliographic suggestions from several colleagues and friends, including Sumathi Ramaswamy, Filippo Osella, Rosinka Chaudhuri, Paul Courtright, and Aniket De. 62 terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X17000324 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 76.127.165.166, on 19 Mar 2018 at 16:08:25, subject to the Cambridge Core