Time in context

If I am to persuade readers that views of time co-existed, but that even in early Calcutta European influence came to shape everyday life for some Indians, then I need to explore cultural relations and ideas more generally, which is the concern of this chapter. Europeans are important because India's main new encounter from the mid-eighteenth century was with the West, and what was happening in early Calcutta, both regulation and its informality, related in part to European attitudes and to rule. 1 They lay behind changes in time that are the main subjects of this book, and they affected Indian reactions. My approach will be branded as ‘Eurocentric’ but the focus can hardly be avoided unless one discounts the trajectory of change: colonial power had consequences. Indian responses varied but were inevitably affected by the influences that were being brought to bear. Some embraced developments introduced by the British, even though they could be difficult to reconcile with traditions; today's India may seem to be retreating from positive political but not economic legacies.