Makers of Modern India

Ramachandra Guha

• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9780674725966
  9780674052468
• eBook ISBN:
  9780674264113
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political Biographies
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Modern India is the world's largest democracy, a sprawling, polyglot nation containing one-sixth of all humankind. The existence of such a complex and distinctive democratic regime qualifies as one of the world's bona fide political miracles. Furthermore, India's leading political thinkers have often served as its most influential political actors—think of Gandhi, whose collected works run to more than ninety volumes, or Ambedkar, or Nehru, who recorded their most eloquent theoretical reflections at the same time as they strove to set the delicate machinery of Indian democracy on a coherent and just path.

Out of the speeches and writings of these thinker-activists, Ramachandra Guha has built the first major anthology of Indian social and political thought. Makers of Modern India collects the work of nineteen of India's foremost generators of political sentiment, from those whose names command instant global recognition to pioneering subaltern and feminist thinkers whose works have until now remained obscure and inaccessible. Ranging across manifold languages and cultures, and addressing every crucial theme of modern Indian history—race, religion, language, caste, gender, colonialism, nationalism, economic development, violence, and nonviolence—Makers of Modern India provides an invaluable roadmap to Indian political debate.

An extensive introduction, biographical sketches of each figure, and guides to further reading make this work a rich resource for anyone interested in India and the ways its leading political minds have grappled with the problems that have increasingly come to define the modern world.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Prologue. Thinking through India
• Part One. The Opening of the Indian Mind
• Introduction to Part One
• Chapter 1. The First Liberal: Rammohan Roy
• Part Two. Reformers and radicals
• Introduction to Part Two
• Chapter 2. The Muslim Modernist: Syed Ahmad Khan
• Chapter 3. The Agrarian Radical: Jotirao Phule
• Chapter 4. The Liberal Reformer: G. K. Gokhale
• Chapter 5. the Militant Nationalist: Bal Gangadhar Tilak
• Chapter 6. The Subaltern Feminist: Tarabai Shinde
• Part Three. Nurturing a Nation
• Introduction to Part Three
• Chapter 7. The Multiple Agendas of M. K. Gandhi
• Chapter 8. The Rooted Cosmopolitan: Rabindranath Tagore
• Chapter 9. The Annihilator of Caste: B. R. Ambedkar
• Chapter 10. The Muslim Separatist: Muhammad Ali Jinnah
• Chapter 11. The Radical Reformer: E. V. Ramaswami
• Chapter 12. The Socialist Feminist: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay
• Chapter 13. The Renewed Agendas of M. K. Gandhi
• Part Four. Debating Democracy
• Introduction to Part Four
• Chapter 14. The Wise Democrat: B. R. Ambedkar
• Chapter 15. The Multiple Agendas of Jawaharlal Nehru
• Chapter 16. The Hindu Supremacist: M. S. Golwalkar
• Chapter 17. The Indigenous Socialist: Rammanohar Lohia
• Chapter 18. The Grassroots Socialist: Jayaprakash Narayan
• Chapter 19. The Gandhian Liberal: C.Rajagopalachari
• Chapter 20. The Defender of the Tribals: Verrier Elwin
• Part Five. A Tradition Re-Affirmed
• Introduction to Part Five
• Chapter 21. The Last Modernist: Hamid Dalwai
• Epilogue: India in the World
• Guide to Further Reading
• Acknowledgements
• Index