Samiparna Samanta, "Meat, Mercy, Morality: Animals and Humanitarianism in Colonial Bengal, 1850-1920" (Oxford UP, 2021)

In Conversation: An OUP Podcast · Dec 2, 2023 · 1h 6m

Meat, Mercy, and Morality: Animals and Humanitarianism in Colonial Bengal, 1850-1920 (Oxford University Press, 2023) by Dr. Samiparna Samanta disentangles complex discourses around humanitarianism to understand the nature of British colonialism in India. Dr. Samanta contends that the colonial project of animal protection in late nineteenth-century Bengal mirrored an irony. Emerging notions of public health and debates on cruelty against animals exposed the disjunction between the claims of a benevolent Empire and a powerful imperial reality where the state constantly sought to discipline its…