India's War

India's War PDF Author: Srinath Raghavan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465098622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 591

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Book Description
Between 1939 and 1945 India underwent extraordinary and irreversible change. Hundreds of thousands of Indians suddenly found themselves in uniform, fighting in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Europe and-something simply never imagined-against a Japanese army poised to invade eastern India. With the threat of the Axis powers looming, the entire country was pulled into the vortex of wartime mobilization. By the war's end, the Indian Army had become the largest volunteer force in the conflict, consisting of 2.5 million men, while many millions more had offered their industrial, agricultural, and military labor. It was clear that India would never be same-the only question was: would the war effort push the country toward or away from independence? In India's War, historian Srinath Raghavan paints a compelling picture of battles abroad and of life on the home front, arguing that the war is crucial to explaining how and why colonial rule ended in South Asia. World War II forever altered the country's social landscape, overturning many Indians' settled assumptions and opening up new opportunities for the nation's most disadvantaged people. When the dust of war settled, India had emerged as a major Asian power with her feet set firmly on the path toward Independence. From Gandhi's early urging in support of Britain's war efforts, to the crucial Burma Campaign, where Indian forces broke the siege of Imphal and stemmed the western advance of Imperial Japan, Raghavan brings this underexplored theater of WWII to vivid life. The first major account of India during World War II, India's War chronicles how the war forever transformed India, its economy, its politics, and its people, laying the groundwork for the emergence of modern South Asia and the rise of India as a major power.

India's War

India's War PDF Author: Srinath Raghavan
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465098622
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 591

Get Book Here

Book Description
Between 1939 and 1945 India underwent extraordinary and irreversible change. Hundreds of thousands of Indians suddenly found themselves in uniform, fighting in the Middle East, North and East Africa, Europe and-something simply never imagined-against a Japanese army poised to invade eastern India. With the threat of the Axis powers looming, the entire country was pulled into the vortex of wartime mobilization. By the war's end, the Indian Army had become the largest volunteer force in the conflict, consisting of 2.5 million men, while many millions more had offered their industrial, agricultural, and military labor. It was clear that India would never be same-the only question was: would the war effort push the country toward or away from independence? In India's War, historian Srinath Raghavan paints a compelling picture of battles abroad and of life on the home front, arguing that the war is crucial to explaining how and why colonial rule ended in South Asia. World War II forever altered the country's social landscape, overturning many Indians' settled assumptions and opening up new opportunities for the nation's most disadvantaged people. When the dust of war settled, India had emerged as a major Asian power with her feet set firmly on the path toward Independence. From Gandhi's early urging in support of Britain's war efforts, to the crucial Burma Campaign, where Indian forces broke the siege of Imphal and stemmed the western advance of Imperial Japan, Raghavan brings this underexplored theater of WWII to vivid life. The first major account of India during World War II, India's War chronicles how the war forever transformed India, its economy, its politics, and its people, laying the groundwork for the emergence of modern South Asia and the rise of India as a major power.

Indian Soldiers in World War I

Indian Soldiers in World War I PDF Author: Andrew T. Jarboe
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496227190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 342

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Book Description
More than one million Indian soldiers were deployed during World War I, serving in the Indian Army as part of Britain’s imperial war effort. These men fought in France and Belgium, Egypt and East Africa, and Gallipoli, Palestine, and Mesopotamia. In Indian Soldiers in World War I Andrew T. Jarboe follows these Indian soldiers—or sepoys—across the battlefields, examining the contested representations British and Indian audiences drew from the soldiers’ wartime experiences and the impacts these representations had on the British Empire’s racial politics. Presenting overlooked or forgotten connections, Jarboe argues that Indian soldiers’ presence on battlefields across three continents contributed decisively to the British Empire’s final victory in the war. While the war and Indian soldiers’ involvement led to a hardening of the British Empire’s prewar racist ideologies and governing policies, the battlefield contributions of Indian soldiers fueled Indian national aspirations and calls for racial equality. When Indian soldiers participated in the brutal suppression of anti-government demonstrations in India at war’s end, they set the stage for the eventual end of British rule in South Asia.

India, Empire, and First World War Culture

India, Empire, and First World War Culture PDF Author: Santanu Das
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107081580
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 495

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Book Description
This is the first cultural and literary history of India and the First World War, with archival research from Europe and South Asia.

Army of Empire

Army of Empire PDF Author: George Morton-Jack
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465094074
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 586

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Book Description
Drawing on untapped new sources, the first global history of the Indian Expeditionary Forces in World War I While their story is almost always overlooked, the 1.5 million Indian soldiers who served the British Empire in World War I played a crucial role in the eventual Allied victory. Despite their sacrifices, Indian troops received mixed reactions from their allies and their enemies alike-some were treated as liberating heroes, some as mercenaries and conquerors themselves, and all as racial inferiors and a threat to white supremacy. Yet even as they fought as imperial troops under the British flag, their broadened horizons fired in them new hopes of racial equality and freedom on the path to Indian independence. Drawing on freshly uncovered interviews with members of the Indian Army in Iraq and elsewhere, historian George Morton-Jack paints a deeply human story of courage, colonization, and racism, and finally gives these men their rightful place in history.

India at War

India at War PDF Author: Yasmin Khan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199753490
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
"First published in Great Britain in 2015 as The Raj at War by The Bodley Head"--Title page verso.

The Indian Army on the Western Front South Asia Edition

The Indian Army on the Western Front South Asia Edition PDF Author: George Morton-Jack
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107117658
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Recasts the role of the Indian Army on the Western Front, questioning why its performance was traditionally deemed a failure.

Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War

Farthest Field: An Indian Story of the Second World War PDF Author: Raghu Karnad
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393248100
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
“I have not lately read a finer book than this—on any subject at all. . . . A masterpiece.” —Simon Winchester, New Statesman The photographs of three young men had stood in his grandmother’s house for as long as he could remember, beheld but never fully noticed. They had all fought in the Second World War, a fact that surprised him. Indians had never figured in his idea of the war, nor the war in his idea of India. One of them, Bobby, even looked a bit like him, but Raghu Karnad had not noticed until he was the same age as they were in their photo frames. Then he learned about the Parsi boy from the sleepy south Indian coast, so eager to follow his brothers-in-law into the colonial forces and onto the front line. Manek, dashing and confident, was a pilot with India’s fledgling air force; gentle Ganny became an army doctor in the arid North-West Frontier. Bobby’s pursuit would carry him as far as the deserts of Iraq and the green hell of the Burma battlefront. The years 1939–45 might be the most revered, deplored, and replayed in modern history. Yet India’s extraordinary role has been concealed, from itself and from the world. In riveting prose, Karnad retrieves the story of a single family—a story of love, rebellion, loyalty, and uncertainty—and with it, the greater revelation that is India’s Second World War. Farthest Field narrates the lost epic of India’s war, in which the largest volunteer army in history fought for the British Empire, even as its countrymen fought to be free of it. It carries us from Madras to Peshawar, Egypt to Burma—unfolding the saga of a young family amazed by their swiftly changing world and swept up in its violence.

The Coolie's Great War

The Coolie's Great War PDF Author: Radhika Singha
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197566901
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 412

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Book Description
Though largely invisible in histories of the First World War, over??550,000 men in the ranks of the Indian army were non-combatants. From the porters, stevedores and construction workers in the Coolie Corps to those who maintained supply lines and removed the wounded from the battlefield, Radhika Singha recovers the story of this unacknowledged service. The labor regimes built on the backs of these 'coolies' sustained the military infrastructure of empire; their deployment in interregional arenas bent to the demands of global war. Viewed as racially subordinate and subject to 'non-martial' caste designations, they fought back against their status, using the warring powers' need for manpower as leverage to challenge traditional service hierarchies and wage differentials. The Coolie's Great War views that global conflict through the lens of Indian labor, constructing a distinct geography of the war--from tribal settlements and colonial jails, beyond India's frontiers, to the battlefronts of France and Mesopotamia.

India and the First World War

India and the First World War PDF Author: Vedica Kant
Publisher: Roli Books
ISBN: 9788174369796
Category : Soldiers
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Though the Great war is widely considered to have been a primarily European conflict, it had enormous effects halfway across the world, and especially in India. Largely overlooked by Indian history textbooks, many Indian nationalists believed that supporting Britain's war effort would benefit India's move towards self-government. As a result, over a million and a half Indians were encouraged to enlist, and subsequently deployed to fight for the British."--Book jacket.

Soldiers of Empire

Soldiers of Empire PDF Author: Tarak Barkawi
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1107169585
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 341

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Book Description
Barkawi re-imagines the study of war with imperial and multinational armies that fought in Asia in the Second World War.