| Summary/Abstract |
This article argues that competing ideas about the nature of public selfhood structured the Maharaj Libel Case, as well as colonial publics more broadly. Jadunathji Maharaj had, in effect, lost his libel suit even before it went to court. For libel law, the essence of the human person is a private self that owns various forms of property, including the public persona known as ‘reputation’. For the Hindu Pushtimarg, meanwhile, the Maharaj was considered an incarnation of Krishna; his religious or public self preceded and was the ontological ground for his merely personal being. To compare these two conceptualisations of the self is to see how selfhood became an important site for the articulation of the public in colonial India.
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