Temporalities, history and routines of rule in colonial India

British colonial rule in India, as elsewhere in the world, reconstituted ca tegories of time and space through its administrative practices. This paper explores how a state temporality was introduced which in turn enabled a di scourse of progress and history. Drawing upon the works of Foucault and rec ent postcolonial studies, it argues that the requirement of 'normalized' co lonial subjects as objects of colonial regulatory practices rendered histor y as a site of colonial mimicry.