Suchergebnisse

The man whom Indian nationalists perceived as the "George Washington of India" and who was President of the Indian National Congress in 1938-1939 is a legendary figure. Called Netaji ("leader") by his countrymen, Subhas Chandra Bose struggled all his life to liberate his people from British rule and, in pursuit of that goal, raised and led the Indian National Army against Allied Forces during World War II. His patriotism, as Gandhi asserted, was second to none, but his actions aroused controversy in India and condemnation in the West. Now, in a definitive biography of the revered Indian nationalist, Sugata Bose deftly explores a charismatic personality whose public and private life encapsulated the contradictions of world history in the first half of the twentieth century. He brilliantly evokes Netaji's formation in the intellectual milieu of Calcutta and Cambridge, probes his thoughts and relations during years of exile, and analyzes his ascent to the peak of nationalist politics. Amidst riveting accounts of imprisonment and travels, we glimpse the profundity of his struggle: to unite Hindu and Muslim, men and women, and diverse linguistic groups within a single independent Indian nation. Finally, an authoritative account of his untimely death in a plane crash will put to rest rumors about the fate of this "deathless hero." This epic of a life larger than its legend is both intimate, based on family archives, and global in significance. His Majesty's Opponent establishes Bose among the giants of Indian and world history

Contributed articles

As well as being an outstanding contribution to Indian economic and social history, this book draws important conclusions about peasant politics in general and about the effects of international economic fluctuations on primary producing countries. Dr Bose develops a general typology of systems of agrarian production in Bengal to show how these responded to different types of pressure from the world economy, and treats in detail the effects of the world Depression on Bengal. Separate chapters are devoted to the themes of agrarian conflict and religious strife in east Bengal, the agrarian dimension of mass nationalism in west Bengal and sharecroppers agitations in the frontier regions. The conclusion attempts a synthesis of the typology of agrarian social structure and the periodisation of peasant politics, placing this in the wider context of agrarian societies and protest in other parts of India and in South-east Asia

This article elucidates the meaning of Indian nationalism and its connection to religious universalism as a problem of ethics. It engages in that exercise of elucidation by interpreting a few of the key texts by Aurobindo Ghose on the relationship between ethics and politics in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Both secularist and subalternist histories have contributed to misunderstandings of Aurobindo's political thought and shown an inability to comprehend its ethical moorings. The specific failures in fathoming the depths of Aurobindo's thought are related to more general infirmities afflicting the history of political and economic ideas in colonial India. In exploring how best to achieve Indian unity, Aurobindo had shown that Indian nationalism was not condemned to pirating from the gallery of models of states crafted by the West. By reconceptualizing the link between religion and politics, this essay suggests a new way forward in Indian intellectual history.

Bengal is a vast cremation ground, a meeting place for ghosts and evil spirits, a land so overrun by dogs, jackals and vultures that it makes one wonder whether the Bengalis are really alive or have become ghosts from some distant epoch. And yet in the imaginative words of the poet, golden Bengal was once 'well-watered, fruitful, abundant with crops.' A garden of culture and civilization for over a thousand years … (Biplabi, 7 November, 1943, cited in Paul Greenough, Prosperity and Misery in Medern Bengal: the Famine of 1943–44, New York, 1982).