Lokamanya (revered leader) Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 - 1920), the extremist politician of Maharashtra, a region of western India, was one of the first Congress Party leaders to adopt the strategy of mass politics. Interpretations of his role and his achievement differen greatly. Some historians depict Tilak as India's first mass politician who was a creative nationalist myth-maker; other suggest that he was an opportunist who manipulated politics for selfish, elitist purposes. With an eye to resolving these conflicting opinions, Cashman related Tilak's ideology to his political organization. the author concentrates on four mass movements, studying the Lokamanya when he was engaged in political action and comparing his public statements with his political tactics. This approach provides a means of examining the manner in which Tilak redefined myths and of assessing the value of myths for purposes of political mobilization. Cashman suggests deficiencies in previous interpretations of Tilak. Arguing that the limitations of the mass movements need not be explained by the inadequacies of myths, he demonstrates that instead they reflected the transitional state of Maharashtraian society, which lacked a broad consensus. Tilak was active at a time when there was no common goal, no broader objective, in which sectional interests might be subsumed. He symbolized the uncertain striving of his society for some new direction, whose nature was yet unknown. He did not create the myth of the Lokamanya or the ideology of nationalism but, responding to social and political pressures, became a prisoner of the myths. Much writing of Indian history has been influenced either by a narrow ideological approach or by a retreat to arithmetical pragmatism. Cashman attempts to restore a balance by reexamining the relationship of myth to politics. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

Lokamanya (revered leader) Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856 - 1920), the extremist politician of Maharashtra, a region of western India, was one of the first Congress Party leaders to adopt the strategy of mass politics. Interpretations of his role and his achievement differen greatly. Some historians depict Tilak as India's first mass politician who was a creative nationalist myth-maker; other suggest that he was an opportunist who manipulated politics for selfish, elitist purposes. With an eye to resolving these conflicting opinions, Cashman related Tilak's ideology to his political organization. the author concentrates on four mass movements, studying the Lokamanya when he was engaged in political action and comparing his public statements with his political tactics. This approach provides a means of examining the manner in which Tilak redefined myths and of assessing the value of myths for purposes of political mobilization. Cashman suggests deficiencies in previous interpretations of Tilak. Arguing that the limitations of the mass movements need not be explained by the inadequacies of myths, he demonstrates that instead they reflected the transitional state of Maharashtraian society, which lacked a broad consensus. Tilak was active at a time when there was no common goal, no broader objective, in which sectional interests might be subsumed. He symbolized the uncertain striving of his society for some new direction, whose nature was yet unknown. He did not create the myth of the Lokamanya or the ideology of nationalism but, responding to social and political pressures, became a prisoner of the myths. Much writing of Indian history has been influenced either by a narrow ideological approach or by a retreat to arithmetical pragmatism. Cashman attempts to restore a balance by reexamining the relationship of myth to politics. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1975.

The popular image of the British Raj-an era of efficient but officious governors, sycophantic local functionaries, doting amahs, blisteringly hot days and torrid nights-chronicled by Forster and Kipling is a glamorous, nostalgic, but entirely fictitious. In this dramatic revisionist history, Jon Wilson upends the carefully sanitized image of unity, order, and success to reveal an empire rooted far more in violence than in virtue, far more in chaos than in control. Through the lives of administrators, soldiers, and subjects-both British and Indian-The Chaos of Empire traces Britain's imperial rule from the East India Company's first transactions in the 1600s to Indian Independence in 1947. The Raj was the most public demonstration of a state's ability to project power far from home, and its perceived success was used to justify interventions around the world in the years that followed. But the Raj's institutions-from law courts to railway lines-were designed to protect British power without benefiting the people they ruled. This self-serving and careless governance resulted in an impoverished people and a stifled society, not a glorious Indian empire. Jon Wilson's new portrait of a much-mythologized era finally and convincingly proves that the story of benign British triumph was a carefully concocted fiction, here thoroughly and totally debunked.

In this classic study of Pandita Ramabai's life, Uma Chakravarti brings to light one of the foremost thinkers of nineteenth-century India and one of its earliest feminists. A scholar and an eloquent speaker, Ramabai was no stranger to controversy. Her critique of Brahminical patriarchy was in sharp contrast to Annie Besant, who championed the cause of Hindu society. And in an act seen by contemporary Hindu society as a betrayal not only of her religion but of her nation, Ramabai – herself a high-caste Hindu widow – chose to convert to Christianity. Chakravarti's book stands out as one of the most important critiques of gender and power relations in colonial India, with particular emphasis on issues of class and caste. Published by Zubaan.

"This book examines and establishes the importance of one aspect of popular political arguments - rhetorical features that draw upon tradition as taken-for-granted values, judgments, and calculations. It illustrates how popular political arguments draw upon this "rhetoric of right," unique to each political community, to establish the "correctness" or "rightness" of a policy proposal. It then uses that illustration to argue first that tradition in political arguments is not only present, but important; second, that tradition operates through time in a contextual rather than evolutionary manner, and third, that political theorists must take seriously the presence of tradition in political arguments in both its substance and its formal aspects." "The book is based upon a study of political arguments in the Indian religious/political movement that grew up around the Indian mystic Aurobindo Ghose and his collaborator Mirra Richard."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

original writing of Lokmanya Tilak THE ORION THE ARCTIC HOME IN THE VEDAS VEDIC CHRONOLOGY & OTHER ESSAYS

This collection of 17 original essays, provides insights into the many ways in which the interrelated issues of culture, identity and `Indianness' are expressed in contemporary times. The contributors map and evaluate the developments in their respective fields over the past 50 years and cover the topics of art, music, theatre, literature, philosophy, science, history and feminism.