(This is an archived copy of a book review originally published here at India Currents magazine.) I can’t recall when I first read Edward Said’s groundbreaking book Orientalism, which critiques the oversimplification and romanticizing of the East by colonizers intent on packaging colonized cultures for their consumption. What I do recall is the immediate sense of gratitude I felt, for Said gave language to an experience I had long had as an Indian-American reader of English authors writing about India: “In a sense the limitations of Orientalism are…the limitations that follow upon disregarding, essentializing, denuding the humanity of another culture, people, or geographical region.” We see this essentializing constantly in…