India Colonised

Nile Green's Islam and the Army in Colonial India is one of those rare works that inspires both admiration and envy. It is a study that cannot fail to impress its readers with its erudition and innovation, especially when reconciling seemingly incompatible official accounts preserved in the colonial archive with subaltern memories preserved in oral traditions.

This book is a study of the cultural world of the Muslim soldiers of colonial India, set in Hyderabad in the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and focuses on the soldiers' relationships with the faqir holy men who protected them and the British officers they served.

Islam and the Army in Colonial India contests the widely held belief that Islam was incompatible with the goals and operations of the colonial army, which was a dangerous and ultimately subversive force that sapped the morale and discipline of the Raj's armies. This Orientalist stereotype of Islam as being anti-military discipline persists, as evidenced by the numerous newspaper articles and editorials covering any aspect of Muslim life.

Tune into the episode with Dr Nile Green, exploring the extraordinary lives of Muslims sepoys and the ways in which the colonial army helped promote the sepoy religion while at the same time attempting to control and suppress certain aspects of it.

In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Jessica Namakkal, author of the book, "Unsettling Utopia: The Making and Unmaking of French India"

In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Sana Haroon, author of the book, "The Mosques of Colonial South Asia: A Social and Legal History of Muslim Worship"

In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Arvind Sharma, author of the book, "The Ruler's Gaze: A Study of British Rule Over India from a Saidian Perspective"

Dr Arvind Sharma, longstanding professor of comparative religion at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, now takes up the Palestinian academic's groundbreaking ideas - originally put forth predominantly in a Middle Eastern context - and tests them against Indian material. He explores in an Indian context Said's contention that the relationship between knowledge and power is central to the way the West depicts the non-West. Scholarly and accessible, The Ruler's Gaze throws fresh light on Indian colonial history through a Saidian lens.

According to Said, Orientalism is inextricably tied to the imperialist societies who produced it, which makes much orientalist work inherently political and servile to power. This book is a heroic attempt to translate Said’s theories on Orientalism to British scholarship on India and Hinduism and how it faithfully followed the ups and downs of British political power in India. In a quite convincing way, the book impresses on the readers that the relationship between knowledge and power is central to the way the West depicts the non-West. Arvind Sharma served in the distinguished Indian Administrative Service (IAS) and is the Birks Professor of Comparative Religion in the School of Religious Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He has authored many books and was instrumental in facilitating the adoption of a Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the world’s religions.

There is a series of such amazingly curated interactions with authors and scholars on the history of the subcontinent. Check out our website www.indiacolonised.com  for more blogs and podcasts exploring the tales of India's contemporary history. Do follow us on our social media sites for more exciting updates.  Until next time. Stay Safe and Stay Curious.

In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Himanshu Jha, author of the book, "Capturing Institutional Change: the Case of the Right to Information Act in India".

Dr Himanshu Jha is a faculty in the Department of Political Science at the South Asia Institute, Heidelberg University, Germany. His major interests could be located in the areas of politics, policy and history and thus his empirical findings and theoretical underpinnings can be located at the intersection of all three.

In his new book, Himanshu Jha narrates the story of the events and decisions that led the government to change the norms of secrecy to transparency that is, the book examines the case of the Right to Information Act 2005 as a transformation in the information regime. Based on the historical- archival material, internal government documents and interviews the book argues that the RTIA was a result of an incremental, slow-moving process of ‘ideas’ emerging endogenously from within the state right since independence. By bringing in new evidence that was ignored in the mainstream literature this book problematizes the dominant (and somewhat settled) narratives, unpacks and explains the politics of institutional change and attempts to set history straight.

This interview explores and examines the provided stances in the book along with other broader perspectives of when and how does policy change happens in Indian governments and other intricacies that lead up to major transformations within institutions.

There is a series of such amazingly curated interactions with authors and scholars on the history of the subcontinent. Check out our website www.indiacolonised.com  for more blogs and podcasts exploring the tales of India's contemporary history. Do follow us on our social media sites for more exciting updates. 

In this episode of Guftagu, we've with us Dr Ghee Bowman, author of the book, "The Indian Contingent: The Forgotten Muslim Soldiers of Dunkirk".

Dr Ghee Bowman is a historian, teacher and storyteller based in Exeter, England. He has also worked in the theatre, for NGOs and in education in the UK and around the world. This book, his very first, sprang from research he undertook to explore Exeter’s multi-cultural history which landed him onto three photos of Indian soldiers wearing pagris in Devon. This furthered him to The National Archives, an MA at Exeter University and then a PhD. His five-year-long study of the Second World War’s Indian contingent took him across five countries.

As the title suggests, the book brings to light an omitted chapter of the historic Battle of Dunkirk that is the crucial role played by Indian soldiers in the evacuation of the Allies from a precarious battlefield. The Indian Contingent, through rigorous research and engrossing narration, traces the journey of Force K6 of the 25th Animal Transport Company of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps from their arrival in France on 26 December 1939, their captivity under the Germans to their return to India on the verge of partitio

Interestingly, 2020 marked the 80th anniversary of the dramatic evacuation of 338,000 Allied troops from Dunkirk in May 1940, as the German army closed in. This wartime legend is also the subject of the award-winning 2017 film Dunkirk but, as is only too evident from the film and other accounts of the Second World War, the presence of Indian soldiers is neither known nor remembered, at least in the western world. Bowman’s narrative of individual soldiers’ lives in rural and urban Punjab, interwoven with his descriptions of the war, draws on his painstaking research that includes rare archives, diaries, photographs and, indeed, memories passed on to descendants. The book leads up to the aftermath of the war and the new realities. This interview explores and examines the provided stances in the book along with other broader perspectives of the event.

Indian Army Special Newsreel (1940): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yq6E1luxLQQ

There is a series of such amazingly curated interactions with authors and scholars on the history of the subcontinent. Check out our website www.indiacolonised.com  for more blogs and podcasts exploring the tales of India's contemporary history. Do follow us on our social media sites for more exciting updates.

Riaz Dean is an Engineer by profession and an independent scholar. He is also a member of the NZ Society of Authors and the NZ Cartographical Society.

As the title suggests, the book is about the extraordinary explorers, spies and mapmakers who explored the vast region’s of Asia against the backdrop of imperial ambitions of powerful players like Russia and Great Britain. This expedition was at the surface to fill in large portions of the map while spying out the country for military reasons during the so-called Great Game.

Set in four parts and arranged chronologically, with five informative maps, the book expands on the relevant political intricacies and the roles played by some adventurous young people like William Moorcroft, William Lambton and his cartographers, George Everest, the Pundits employed by the survey of India -- in undertaking this greatest survey. This interview explores and examines the provided stances in the book along with other broader perspectives on this great exploration.

Thank you everyone for tuning into this conversation with Riaz Dean. We really hope you enjoyed the conversation and if you did, please consider subscribing to our channel and podcast for more such amazing content. There is a series of such guftagu with a line of amazingly curated authors and scholars on the history of the subcontinent. Check out our website www.indiacolonised.com  for blogs and podcasts exploring the tales of India's contemporary history.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter handle @Indiacolonised for more exciting updates.  Don’t forget to visit our website for book recommendations and a complete reading list if you want to read more on India’s Modern History!

Dr Raghav Kishore is a historian of Modern South Asia and his research has primarily focused on the transformation of urban governance under colonial rule in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

The (Un)governable City: Productive Failure in the Making of Colonial Delhi, 1857-1911, examines the production of urban space and its relation to colonial governance in Delhi in the aftermath of the Great Rebellion of 1857 until the transfer of the colonial capital to the city in 1911. Contesting the popular view that the aftermath of the rebellion was a period of political stability, the author creatively demonstrates how the tensions, contradictions and failures of colonial policies were responsible for the unintended development of state capacity and also provided opportunities for Delhi’s residents and social groups to assert their claims to city spaces. This volume brings to scrutiny Delhi’s cultural, economic and political transitions and the relationships between local, regional and imperial governments during this period.

Demonstrating how conflicting agendas of urban policy could stifle specific state initiatives, Raghav further argues that such misadventures or failures should be seen as productive– on the one hand by providing a language of new legal codes for the population with which to assail the state and on the other, by enlarging the latter’s bureaucracy and regulatory capabilities.

Thank you everyone for tuning into this conversation with Dr Raghav Kishore. We really hope you enjoyed the conversation and if you did, please consider subscribing to our channel and podcast for more such amazing content. There is a series of such guftagu with a line of amazingly curated authors and scholars on the history of the subcontinent. Check out our website www.indiacolonised.com  for blogs and podcasts exploring the tales of India's contemporary history.

Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter handle @Indiacolonised for more exciting updates.  Don’t forget to visit our website for book recommendations and a complete reading list if you want to read more on India’s Modern History!

With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his senior-most Indian civil servant, Vappala Pangunni Menon—or VP—giving him a single night to devise an alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence. Menon met his stringent deadline, presenting the Menon Plan, which would change the map of the world forever. Menon was unarguably the architect of the modern Indian state. Yet startlingly little is known about this bureaucrat, patriot and visionary. In this definitive biography, Menon’s great-granddaughter, Narayani Basu, rectifies this travesty. She takes us through the highs and lows of his career, from his determination to give women the right to vote; to his strategy, at once ruthless and subtle, to get the princely states to accede to India; to his decision to join forces with the Swatantra Party; to his final relegation to relative obscurity.

With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his senior-most Indian civil servant, Vappala Pangunni Menon—or VP—giving him a single night to devise an alternative, coherent and workable plan for independence. Menon met his stringent deadline, presenting the Menon Plan, which would change the map of the world forever. Menon was unarguably the architect of the modern Indian state. Yet startlingly little is known about this bureaucrat, patriot and visionary. In this definitive biography, Menon’s great-granddaughter, Narayani Basu, rectifies this travesty. She takes us through the highs and lows of his career, from his determination to give women the right to vote; to his strategy, at once ruthless and subtle, to get the princely states to accede to India; to his decision to join forces with the Swatantra Party; to his final relegation to relative obscurity.