Hi, I’m Sukhraj Singh from Sikh Archive and welcome to the fourth episode in our Podcast series of conversations with historians, authors, academics, journalists and activists on topics related to their areas of expertise on Sikh or Panjabi history.

In this episode we are joined by Professor Kama Maclean, who is a professor of South Asian History and the author of the book, “A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, image and Text, which we will be discussing today. 

The book delivers a fresh perspective on the revolutionary activity that was taking place in the build up to the independence movement with a strong focus on the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army formed by Chandrashekar Azad and Bhagat Singh. 

We discuss a lot of important themes in our conversation such as the important role that the revolutionaries played in influencing Congress policy and provoking colonial responses, in the process bringing India closer to independence…. as well as... understanding why the revolutionaries of the HSRA have long been marginalised in the academic historiography of nationalism, despite their extraordinary popularity in popular culture.