The Insecurity State: Punjab and the Making of Colonial Power in British India

In this provocative new work, Mark Condos explores the 'dark underside' of the ideologies that sustained British rule in India. Using Punjab as a case study, he argues that India's colonial overlords were obsessively fearful, and plagued by an unreasoning belief in their own vulnerability as rulers. These enduring anxieties precipitated, and justified, an all too frequent recourse to violence, joined with an insistence on untrammelled power placed in the hands of the executive. Examining ho...