A History of Modern India

by Ishita Banerjee-Dube

Overview

This book provides an interpretive and comprehensive account of the history of India between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, a crucial epoch characterized by colonialism, nationalism and the emergence of the independent Indian Union. It explores significant historiographical debates concerning the period while highlighting important new issues, especially those of gender, ecology, caste, and labour. The work combines an analysis of colonial and independent India in order to underscore ideologies, policies, and processes that shaped the colonial state and continue to mould the Indian nation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781107659728
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/27/2014
Pages:	519
Product dimensions:	7.17(w) x 9.45(h) x 1.06(d)

About the Author

Ishita Banerjee-Dube is Professor of History at the Centre for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City, and a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), Mexico, where she holds the highest rank. Her authored books include Divine Affairs (2001), Religion, Law, and Power (2007) and, in Spanish, Fronteras del Hinduismo (2007). Among her eight edited volumes are Unbecoming Modern (2005), Caste in History (2008) and Ancient to Modern (2009).

Table of Contents

Photographs, maps, posters and figures; About the author; Acknowledgements; Prologue; 1. The colourful world of the eighteenth century; 2. Emergence of the Company Raj; 3. An inaugural century; 4. Creating anew; 5. Imagining India; 6. Challenge and rupture; 7. The Mahatma phenomenon; 8. Difficulties and initiatives; 9. Many pathways of a nation; 10. The tumultuous forties; 11. 1947 and after; Bibliography; Index.

Editorial Reviews

"Through a dynamic combination of history-telling and in-depth historiographical analysis, Ishita Banerjee-Dube's A History of Modern India breaks exciting new ground for students and scholars alike. She discards the familiar, and all too predictable, colony-to-nation narrative for an approach that exposes the troubled and uncertain course of modern Indian history, unravels the startling heterogeneity of that history, explores the radical possibilities of recent historical reinterpretation, and provides fascinating insights into the conflicts and contradictions that make up India's multiple and many layered pasts. This imaginative rethinking of India's history and the complex fashioning of its modernity deserves a wide and appreciative audience."
David Arnold, Emeritus Professor, University of Warwick

"Ishita Banerjee-Dube's A History of Modern India is written with tremendous intelligence, verve, and lucidity. Tracing the history of India from the decline of the Mughal Empire to the making of the Indian Constitution, the book deftly combines the heterogeneity and plurality of the past with a coherent narrative arc. It incorporates some of the most cutting-edge historical scholarship with clarity and judiciousness. The book is especially strong for its attention to social and cultural processes: questions of gender, of caste, of subaltern or popular politics, and of the environment all receive their due. This is a very welcome addition to the textbook market that will likely become the new 'go-to' book for teachers and students alike."
Mrinalini Sinha, Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History, University of Michigan

"What is remarkable about this book is the pulse the author has on most of the significant historiographical debates that have engaged historians of modern India. To write a textbook on modern India is surely fraught with difficulties, considering the huge amount of excellent scholarship present already. The author has done an excellent job in pushing new and important issues for a student to take cognizance of, often summarizing these issues and debates for a reader."
Anshu Malhotra, University of Delhi

"This is by far the best textbook on South Asia available. Not since Sumit Sarkar's Modern India has there been a textbook of this calibre and quality. We have, for long, needed a successor to Sumit Sarkar's splendid book - one that covers not only the new material since then, but is written in the spirit that would accomplish, for our times, what Sarkar's book and spirit accomplished for those times."
Ajay Skaria, University of Minnesota

"I read Ishita Banerjee-Dube's new book with great pleasure and profit. It is a highly informative and readable survey of modern Indian historical developments from early modern times to the late colonial years. It will be extremely useful for students of history at all levels."
Sumit Sarkar, formerly University of Delhi

"The survey is a masterly one. It presents a wide range of material and it is written in an enjoyable manner which makes it eminently readable."
Tanika Sarkar, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi

From the Publisher