At The Close Of The Twentieth Century, A Young Photographer On A Train To Lucknow Suddenly Finds Himself In The Deep End Of 1942. Adrift In The Final Years Of The Raj, He Improvises A Life, And Is Caught Up In The Fates Of Ammi, Forever Waiting For A Vanished Husband; Masroor, Desperate To Stall A Hindu Vs Muslim Cricket Match; Chaubey, A Rebel Turned Repertory Star; Parwana, Who Starts Life As An Orphan And Nearly Ends It As An Ersatz Widow On A Make-Believe Pyre; Gyanendra, A Pioneering Pornographer; Carrick, A Parson Worried About The Millions Starving In Bengal; And The Narrator S Own Grandmother, Whom He Personally Cremated Not So Long Ago. But Hindsight Tells Him That Partition Will Destroy This World. And In His Desperate Struggles To Avert The Inevitable, We Discover, Often With An Almost Unbearable Poignance, How The Possibilities In India S Past Were Squandered, Some Wantonly, Others Accidentally.

This book is regarded as a personal manifesto, a statement through the history of partition and its aftermath, of the values which India's Muslims should cherish and of the national priorities they should promote. It provides the reference-point for understanding India's Partition and its legacy.

The popularity of the Muslim League and its idea of Pakistan has been measured in terms of its success in achieving the goal of a sovereign state in the Muslim majority regions of North West and North East India. It led to an oversight of Muslim leaders and organizations which were opposed to this demand, predicating their opposition to the League on its understanding of the history and ideological content of the Muslim nation. This volume takes stock of multiple narratives about Muslim identity formation in the context of debates about partition, historicizes those narratives, and reads them in the light of the larger political milieu of the period. Focusing on the critiques of the Muslim League, its concept of the Muslim nation, and the political settlement demanded on its behalf, it studies how the movement for Pakistan inspired a contentious, influential conversation on the definition of the Muslim nation.

A correct perspective on the origins and development of pan-Islam in British India had eluded writers for years. The author treats the subject comprehensively and highlights links between pan-Islam and nationalist movements in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In focus is the Khilafat movement (1918-1924) which, with its distinct religio-political dynamics, aimed at saving Ottoman Turkey from dismemberment as well as securing self-government for India. Extensively utilizing a variety of archival and other source materials, the author unfolds the fascinating story of how, in concert with secular forces, the pan-Islamic appeal was mobilized for political gains in the broader context of the British policy towards Turkey and India. The book also examines the gradual transition of Muslim politics from pan-Islam to territorial nationalism, especially after the Turks abolished the caliphate and the Indians plunged back into communal strife.

An iconoclastic history of the first two decades after independence in India Nehru’s India brings a provocative but nuanced set of new interpretations to the history of early independent India. Drawing from her extensive research over the past two decades, Taylor Sherman reevaluates the role of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, in shaping the nation. She argues that the notion of Nehru as the architect of independent India, as well as the ideas, policies, and institutions most strongly associated with his premiership—nonalignment, secularism, socialism, democracy, the strong state, and high modernism—have lost their explanatory power. They have become myths. Sherman examines seminal projects from the time and also introduces readers to little-known personalities and fresh case studies, including India’s continued engagement with overseas Indians, the importance of Buddhism in secular India, the transformations in industry and social life brought about by bicycles, a riotous and ultimately doomed attempt to prohibit the consumption of alcohol in Bombay, the early history of election campaign finance, and the first state-sponsored art exhibitions. The author also shines a light on underappreciated individuals, such as Apa Pant, the charismatic diplomat who influenced foreign policy from Kenya to Tibet, and Urmila Eulie Chowdhury, the rebellious architect who helped oversee the building of Chandigarh. Tracing and critiquing developments in this formative period in Indian history, Nehru’s India offers a fresh and definitive exploration of the nation’s early postcolonial era.