No touching, no spitting, no praying : the museum in South Asia / editors, Saloni Mathur and Kavita Singh.

Includes bibliographical references.

Introduction / Saloni Mathur, Kavita Singh -- Part I: Inaugural formations. The transformation of objects into artifacts, antiquities and art in nineteenth-century India / Bernard Cohn -- The museum in the colony: collecting, conserving, classifying / Tapati Guha-Thakurta -- Staging science / Gyan Prakash -- Part II: National re-orientations. The museum is national / Kavita Singh -- Grace McCann Morley and the display of Indian modernity / Kristy Phillips -- Museumising modern art: National Gallery of Modern Art, the Indian case-study / Vidya Shivadas -- Part III: Contemporary engagements. Museums are good to think: heritage on view in India / Arjun Appadurai, Carol A. Breckenridge -- Remembering the rural in suburban Chennai: the artisnal pasts of DakshinaChitra / Mary Hancock -- Reincarnations of the museum: the museum in an age of religious revivalism / Saloni Mathur, Kavita Singh -- Museum watching: an introduction (13 ethnographic portraits from the field) -- About the editors -- Notes on contributors.

"This volume brings together a range of essays that offer a new perspective on the dynamic history of the museum as a cultural institution in South Asia. It traces the museum from its origin as a tool of colonialism and adoption as a vehicle of sovereignty in the nationalist period, till its role in the present, as it reflects the fissured identities of the post-colonial period"--Publisher's website.