There has been a renewed interest among academics across disciplines in the nature of “colonial knowledge” – various forms and bodies of knowledge such as histories, ethnographic accounts, maps, geographical studies, travel journals, etc. – that was produced by European colonisers about their colonised subjects and their land, language, culture, and other resources. This “knowledge production” was obviously an important part of the colonisers' attempt to achieve complete domination over their colonised subjects. The process of this knowledge-formation has come under critical scrutiny, beginning with Orientalism (1987), the influential work of Edward Said which opened up alternative points of entry into the complex phenomenon of colonial encounter. Among the various issues concerning the whole process of colonial knowledge production, the study of the role of native intellectuals in this activity assumes a special significance for two reasons: first, it is important to understand what kind of native and local knowledge and disciplinary protocols these intellectuals brought to the project. Second, this, in turn, will throw light on the subtle but significant power native intellectuals wielded in the European project of “knowledge production.”

There are two very different evaluations of the role played by the colonised subjects in the production of colonial knowledge: