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India’s interim government, in office from 2 September 1946 till August 1947, was a unique coalition of the Indian National Congress, All-India Muslim League, and non-Congress and non-League political figures—all presiding over a British/British-trained state apparatus during a period of political transition. These eleven months were packed as much with the events surrounding the formal exit of the empire as its informal continuance; as much with the anticipation of Partition as its alternatives. Though it stands at a juncture of India as a colony and a dominion, it has been overlooked by colonial and postcolonial historiography of that interval, given its sole identification with Partition/Independence. India in the Interregnum moves beneath and beyond this understanding in order to, first, restore identity to the interim government—and its provincial counterparts—and investigate their work, and, second, recover the legacy of the interim government in the formation of contemporary India.
Challenging the thought of Zygmunt Bauman on the subject of liquid modernity, where everything has become unstable, precarious and uncertain, Carlo Bordoni (author with Bauman of »State of Crisis«) proposes to look at contemporary society as an »interregnum«, a temporary break with the past. In a condition characterised by anomie, the questioning of democratic achievements and the primacy of an unbridled economy, he offers a new perspective on our social condition. Understanding the interregnum and being aware of its instability and the social degradation that it entails can help us to make the right choices.
Shortlisted for the Cundill History Prize “Remarkable and pathbreaking...A radical rethink of colonial historiography and a compelling argument for the reassessment of the historical traditions of Hindustan.” —Mahmood Mamdani “The brilliance of Asif’s book rests in the way he makes readers think about the name ‘Hindustan’...Asif’s focus is Indian history but it is, at the same time, a lens to look at questions far bigger.” —Soni Wadhwa, Asian Review of Books “Remarkable...Asif’s analysis and conclusions are powerful and poignant.” —Rudrangshu Mukherjee, The Wire “A tremendous contribution...This is not only a book that you must read, but also one that you must chew over and debate.” —Audrey Truschke, Current History Did India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh have a shared regional identity prior to the arrival of Europeans in the late fifteenth century? Manan Ahmed Asif tackles this contentious question by inviting us to reconsider the work and legacy of the influential historian Muhammad Qasim Firishta, a contemporary of the Mughal emperors Akbar and Jahangir. Inspired by his reading of Firishta and other historians, Asif seeks to rescue our understanding of the region from colonial narratives that emphasize difference and division. Asif argues that a European understanding of India as Hindu has replaced an earlier, native understanding of India as Hindustan, a home for all faiths. Turning to the subcontinent’s medieval past, he uncovers a rich network of historians of Hindustan who imagined, studied, and shaped their kings, cities, and societies. The Loss of Hindustan reveals how multicultural Hindustan was deliberately eclipsed in favor of the religiously partitioned world of today. A magisterial work with far reaching implications, it offers a radical reinterpretation of how India came to its contemporary political identity.
There has long been an unfortunate tendency to dismiss those who were loyal to the Stuarts as, in the immortal words of 1066 and all That, `wrong but romantic', or as the products of unthinking political and religious reaction. In recent years, scholars have begun to explore the phenomenon of royalism during the 1640s. Yet we still know very little about those who were loyal to Charles II during the 1650s. This volume brings together essays by established and emerging historians and literary scholars in Britain, Europe, the United States and Australia, sketching the difficulties, complexities, and nuances of the Royalist experience during the Commonwealth and Protectorate. It examines women, religion, print-culture, literature, the politics of exile, and the nature and extent of royalist networks in England. This ambitious and innovative book sheds important new light on the experience of those who were loyal to the Stuarts. It argues for the need to re-orientate, re-invigorate and re-invent the study of those who detested Cromwell and his `rebels'; and it forces us to examine the decade as a whole from a new perspective. It will be essential reading for anyone interested in the culture, history or literature of the English Revolution.
How can India become a great country once again, is the question explored in this book. In the past, India had significant achievements in science, technology, mathematics and business. A failure to build robust institutional networks of information and trust and indifference of the state to business communities, brought all that crashing down within a generation. Many of these historical patterns persist till today. The ability to create wealth has everything to do with such networks. There was never any shortage of innovation in India. What was lacking was the ability to learn from their own experience. The building of learning networks and a learning ecosystem that could be used by people to leverage success – this is what is needed to unlock the huge talent pool that India possesses. This book addresses young, educated and aspiring Indians in different walks of life who are interested in contemporary issues relating to nation, society and economy. It puts forward some solutions to the problems that India faces. It would be of interest to anyone who would like to know how history can teach us to re-write the Indian growth story and to re-build a great nation. The book could also be used as reading material for students of history, political science, public administration, business administration, in under-graduate and post-graduate classes. Please note: This title is co-published with Manohar Publishers, New Delhi. Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka
Since the economic liberalization of the early 1990s, India has been, on several occasions and at different forums, feted as a great power. This subject has been discussed in numerous books, but mostly in terms of rapid economic growth and immense potential in the emerging market. There is also a vast collection of literature on India's 'soft power '- culture, tourism, frugal engineering, and knowledge economy. However, there has been no serious exploration of the alternative path India can take to achieving great power status - a combination of hard power, geostrategics, and realpolitik. In this book, Bharat Karnad delves exclusively into these hard power aspects of India's rise and the problems associated with them. He offers an incisive analysis of the deficits in the country's military capabilities and in the 'software' related to hard power--absence of political vision and will, insensitivity to strategic geography, and unimaginative foreign and military policies--and arrives at powerful arguments on why these shortfalls have prevented the country from achieving the great power status.
How did upstart outsiders forge vast new empires in early modern Asia, laying the foundations for today's modern mega-states of India and China? In How the East Was Won, Andrew Phillips reveals the crucial parallels uniting the Mughal Empire, the Qing Dynasty and the British Raj. Vastly outnumbered and stigmatised as parvenus, the Mughals and Manchus pioneered similar strategies of cultural statecraft, first to build the multicultural coalitions necessary for conquest, and then to bind the indigenous collaborators needed to subsequently uphold imperial rule. The English East India Company later adapted the same 'define and conquer' and 'define and rule' strategies to carve out the West's biggest colonial empire in Asia. Refuting existing accounts of the 'rise of the West', this book foregrounds the profoundly imitative rather than innovative character of Western colonialism to advance a new explanation of how universal empires arise and endure.
A free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program for monographs. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Writing Self, Writing Empire examines the life, career, and writings of the Mughal state secretary, or munshi, Chandar Bhan “Brahman” (d. c.1670), one of the great Indo-Persian poets and prose stylists of early modern South Asia. Chandar Bhan’s life spanned the reigns of four different emperors, Akbar (1556-1605), Jahangir (1605-1627), Shah Jahan (1628-1658), and Aurangzeb ‘Alamgir (1658-1707), the last of the “Great Mughals” whose courts dominated the culture and politics of the subcontinent at the height of the empire’s power, territorial reach, and global influence. As a high-caste Hindu who worked for a series of Muslim monarchs and other officials, forming powerful friendships along the way, Chandar Bhan’s experience bears vivid testimony to the pluralistic atmosphere of the Mughal court, particularly during the reign of Shah Jahan, the celebrated builder of the Taj Mahal. But his widely circulated and emulated works also touch on a range of topics central to our understanding of the court’s literary, mystical, administrative, and ethical cultures, while his letters and autobiographical writings provide tantalizing examples of early modern Indo-Persian modes of self-fashioning. Chandar Bhan’s oeuvre is a valuable window onto a crucial, though surprisingly neglected, period of Mughal cultural and political history.
How did ordinary English men and women respond to the transformations that accompanied the regicide, the creation of a republic, and the rise of the Cromwellian Protectorate? This book uncovers grassroots responses to the tangible consequences of revolution, delving into everyday practices, social interactions, and power struggles as they intersected with the macro-politics of regime change. Tussles at local alehouses, encounters with excise collectors in the high street, and contests over authority at the marketplace reveal how national politics were felt across the most ordinary of activities. Using a series of case studies from counties, boroughs, and the London metropolis, Boswell argues that factional discourses and shifting power relations complicated social interaction. Localized disaffection was broadcast in newsbooks, pamphlets, and broadsides, shaping political rhetoric that refashioned grassroots grievances to promote royalist desires. By uniting disparate people who were alienated by the policies of interregnum regimes, this literature helped to create the spectre of a unified, royalist commons that materialized in the months leading up to Charles II's Restoration. Such agitation - from disaffected mutters to ritualistic violence against officials - informed the broad political culture that shaped debates over governance during one of the most volatile decades in British history. CAROLINE BOSWELL is Associate Professor in History at the University of Wisconsin, Green Bay.