The Rediscovery of India

Front Cover
Penguin Books India, 2009 - 498 pages
What makes India a nation? What has held its many disparate societies with their diverse, sometimes conflicting, narratives together for more than sixty years? What has allowed India to sustain its commitment to the democratic process, given its location in a region that is largely undemocratic? In this magisterial analysis of the last five hundred years of Indian history, Meghnad Desai looks at India's colonial past, its struggle for independence and its many contemporary conundrums, to discover answers to the questions that have confronted India-watchers for decades. Rejecting much received wisdom, including narratives fashioned by India's ruling establishment, Meghnad Desai goes back to the beginnings of the East-West encounter at the end of the fifteenth century. He tracks its impact on the cultures and politics of the present day, from the emergence of new classes under colonialism, the influence of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi on the idea of Indian nationhood, to the entirely parallel discourses that developed in North and South India. Yet this trajectory, this outcome, was not inevitable. Through a series of 'Counterfactual Boxes' Meghnad Desai analyses the accepted defining moments of India's past and suggests alternative courses that history could so easily have taken.
Meghnad Desai draws on a wealth of sources to illuminate India's journey to the twenty-first century. Whether it is an examination of British parliamentary debates on the question of India's independence, or the liberalization of the economy after decades of licence-permit raj, or the state' complicity in the Gujarat riots, Meghnad Desai's original, occasionally iconoclastic, approach to seemingly settled arguments makes The Rediscovery of India a path-breaking and comprehensive account of India's past and present.
 

Contents

318pdf
3
1934pdf
19
3550pdf
35
5166pdf
51
6782pdf
67
8398pdf
83
99114pdf
99
115130pdf
115
259274pdf
259
275290pdf
275
291306pdf
291
307322pdf
307
323338pdf
323
339354pdf
339
355370pdf
355
371386pdf
371

131146pdf
131
147162pdf
147
163178pdf
163
179194pdf
179
195210pdf
195
211226pdf
211
227242pdf
227
243258pdf
243
387402pdf
387
403418pdf
403
419434pdf
419
435450pdf
435
451466pdf
451
467482pdf
467
483498pdf
483
Copyright

Other editions - View all

Common terms and phrases

Bibliographic information