UNIVERSAL HISTORY
1 total work
This will be a rigorously argued, finely written short history from the Mutiny in 1857, to the Age of Gandhi, India under Nehru, Partition, the wars with China and Pakistan, the Emergency of 1975-77, up to the present day. India is a young nation of sub-continental scale, unparalleled in human diversity and extraordinary historical depth. The most populous country after China, it is in the midst of a profound democratic revolution, on the threshold of vigorous economic transformation. India is gaining a prominent place on the global stage - both symbolically (literature, music, fashion) and practically (nuclear weapons, diaspora, software). In this book Khilnani will examine the central themes, questions and episodes of India's history over the last 150 years. He will argue that modern India's history has been shaped by the responses of its peoples to two questions, both of them raised by India's encounter with the West. The first is one that has long preoccupied the country's cultural and political elites: what is India? Is it a single culture unified by an ancient civilisation?
If, as Indians have repeatedly had to learn, neither race, territory, culture, religion or language can provide it with a basis for unity, how then can this be achieved and sustained? To what extent must it make itself in the image of the West? The second question is a practical and structural one: how could the principle and practice of equality be introduced into a hierarchical society that was designed to resist equality?
If, as Indians have repeatedly had to learn, neither race, territory, culture, religion or language can provide it with a basis for unity, how then can this be achieved and sustained? To what extent must it make itself in the image of the West? The second question is a practical and structural one: how could the principle and practice of equality be introduced into a hierarchical society that was designed to resist equality?