Analyzes events in India from September 1939 to August 1947.

This full account of the partition of India and the transfer of power from England begins with the outbreak of war in 1939 and ends with the transfer itself in 1947. Originally published in 1957. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others have slid into instability and authoritarianism? To address this classic question at the center of policy and academic debates, The Promise of Power investigates a striking puzzle: why, upon the 1947 Partition of British India, was India able to establish a stable democracy while Pakistan created an unstable autocracy? Drawing on interviews, colonial correspondence, and early government records to document the genesis of two of the twentieth century's most celebrated independence movements, Maya Tudor refutes the prevailing notion that a country's democratization prospects can be directly attributed to its levels of economic development or inequality. Instead, she demonstrates that the differential strengths of India's and Pakistan's independence movements directly account for their divergent democratization trajectories. She also establishes that these movements were initially constructed to pursue historically conditioned class interests. By illuminating the source of this enduring contrast, The Promise of Power offers a broad theory of democracy's origins that will interest scholars and students of comparative politics, democratization, state-building, and South Asian political history.

Examining India-America relations between 1942-62, this book reconsiders the role of America in shaping the imagination of post-colonial India. It rejects a conventional orthodoxy that assigns a limited role to America and challenges narratives which neglect the natural asymmetries and focus on discord and differences to define India-America relations. Integrating the security, political and economic elements of the Indo-American relationship it presents a synthesis of India’s encounter with the post-war hegemon and looks at the military, economic and political involvement of America during the ‘transfer of power’ from Britain to India. Bhardwaj delves into the role of American non-government agencies and examines the anti-communist ideological linkages that the Indian political class developed with America, the influence of this bonding and the role of American ideas, experts, funds, international relations and strategy in shaping India’s social, economic and educational institutions. Analyzing India’s non-alignment policy and its linkages to American policy on the non-communist neutrals, it argues that India’s movement towards the Soviet Union and away from China in the mid 1950s was in tune with the American strategy to cause the Sino-Soviet split. The book presents a fresh perspective based on authentic records and adds a new dimension to the understanding of modern Indian history and Indo-American relations. It will appeal to scholars and students of Indian and American history, international relations and strategy.

This book presents a comprehensive history of the Royal Indian Navy (RIN). It traces the origins of the RIN to the East India Company, as early as 1612, and untangles the institution’s complex history. Capturing various transitional phases of the RIN, especially during the crucial period of 1920–1950, it concludes with the final transfer of the RIN from under the British Raj to independent India. Drawn from a host of primary sources—personal diaries and logs, official reports and documents—the author presents a previously unexplored history of colonial and imperial defence policy, and the contribution of the RIN during the World Wars. This book explores several aspects in RIN’s history such as its involvement in the First World War; its status in policies of the British Raj; the martial race theory in the RIN; and the development of the RIN from a non-combat force to a full-fledged combat defence force during the Second World War. It also studies the hitherto unexplored causes, nature and impact of the 1946 RIN Revolt on the eve of India’s independence from a fresh perspective. An important intervention in the study of military and defence history, this will be an essential read for students, researchers, defence personnel, military academy cadets, as well as general readers.