Abstract This introduction revisits the European deployment of the
concept of Oriental Despotism in India and its colonial imbrication with
Mughal history. Padamsee locates the founding appeal of the Mughal
past in early and deeply conflicted British attempts to legitimate a despotic
claim to territoriality that could not otherwise be accommodated
by English legal and constitutional norms. While colonising the Mughal
past became instrumental to colonial self-empowerment, the political-
theological contradictions it entailed resurfaced in the embattled late
colonial state and substantially shaped British and Indian historical fiction,
continuing to fuel the contentious figure of the Mughal in Hindu
Nationalist politics today.
Keywords Colonialism · India · Oriental Despotism · Mughal ·
Sovereignty · Political theology · Hastings · Hindu nationalism