From Plassey to Partition and After

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.