• This book is now regarded as a major intervention in the historiography of modern India, and an authoritative account of the largest anti-imperialist movement in the world.
• It traces India’s colonial encounter, her nationalist longings, and her emergence as a sovereign, democratic republic, along with radical social transformations over two centuries.
• And this enlarged edition offers a perceptive analysis of India’s efforts towards modernisation and democratisation since Independence.
• The book addresses important historiographical questions by taking cognisance of emergent perspectives adopted by social science scholarship over the last twenty-five years.
• The book engages in debates on issues like political economy in eighteenth-century India, socio-religious reform and the nationalist movement.
• It offers a detailed study and analysis of the freedom struggle through its Moderate, Extremist and Gandhian phases, and events like the Swadeshi, Khilafat–Non-Cooperation, Civil Disobedience and Quit India Movements.
• There is a focus on other strands of the nationalist movement—from the revolutionary to socialist and other leftist groups, and the role of women—and its various ideological contestations.
• The newly added concluding chapter links contemporary debates about Indian nationhood with changes in society, economy and polity, from the years of state-directed planning under a one-party system to the emergence of a market economy in an era of predominantly coalition governments.
About the Author
Sekhar Bandyopadhyay is Director, New Zealand India Research Institute, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.
