Author: Narayani Basu
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9386797690
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 675
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Book Description
With his initial plans for an independent India in tatters, the desperate viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, turned to his seniormost 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. Equally, the book candidly explores the man behind the public figure— his unconventional personal life and his private conflicts, which made him channel his energy into public service. Drawing from documents—scattered, unread and unresearched until now—and with unprecedented access to Menon’s papers and his taped off-the-record and explosively frank interviews—this remarkable biography of VP Menon not only covers the life and times of a man unjustly consigned to the footnotes of history but also changes our perception of how India, as we know it, came into being.
Author: Shruti Kapila
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691195226
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 326
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Book Description
A groundbreaking history of the political ideas that made modern India Violent Fraternity is a major history of the political thought that laid the foundations of modern India. Taking readers from the dawn of the twentieth century to the independence of India and formation of Pakistan in 1947, the book is a testament to the power of ideas to drive historical transformation. Shruti Kapila sheds new light on leading figures such as M. K. Gandhi, Muhammad Iqbal, B. R. Ambedkar, and Vinayak Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva, showing how they were innovative political thinkers as well as influential political actors. She also examines lesser-known figures who contributed to the making of a new canon of political thought, such as B. G. Tilak, considered by Lenin to be the "fountainhead of revolution in Asia," and Sardar Patel, India's first deputy prime minister. Kapila argues that it was in India that modern political languages were remade through a revolution that defied fidelity to any exclusive ideology. The book shows how the foundational questions of politics were addressed in the shadow of imperialism to create both a sovereign India and the world's first avowedly Muslim nation, Pakistan. Fraternity was lost only to be found again in violence as the Indian age signaled the emergence of intimate enmity. A compelling work of scholarship, Violent Fraternity demonstrates why India, with its breathtaking scale and diversity, redefined the nature of political violence for the modern global era.
Author: Verinder Grover
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 670
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Book Description
Author: Verinder Grover
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 640
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Book Description
Author: Verinder Grover
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 678
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Book Description
Author: Verinder Grover
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 742
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Book Description
Author: Verinder Grover
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : India
Languages : en
Pages : 628
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Book Description
Author: Sardar Patel
Publisher: Penguin Books India
ISBN: 0143414011
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 132
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Book Description
Vallabhbhai Patel, popularly known as Sardar Patel, was one of India's towering leaders, whose contribution to the Indian Republic is immense. Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi to join the freedom struggle, Patel was at the forefront of the Quit India movement, and was arrested by the British a number of times. After Independence, he served as India's first home minister and deputy prime minister. A successful lawyer, he used his legendary negotiation skills to unite the 550 princely states and colonial provinces under the Union of India, to create the nation we know today. The speeches and writings collected here showcase Vallabhbhai Patel's unique vision for his beloved country-his staunch belief in communal harmony, benefits of freedom for all citizens and in peace and cooperation between different regions.
Author: Ramachandra Guha
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674052463
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 513
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Book Description
Includes a short biographical introduction to each person, followed by excerpts from their writings.
Author: Madhav Khosla
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674980875
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
An Economist Best Book of the Year How India’s Constitution came into being and instituted democracy after independence from British rule. Britain’s justification for colonial rule in India stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. And the empire did its best to ensure this was the case, impoverishing Indian subjects and doing little to improve their socioeconomic reality. So when independence came, the cultivation of democratic citizenship was a foremost challenge. Madhav Khosla explores the means India’s founders used to foster a democratic ethos. They knew the people would need to learn ways of citizenship, but the path to education did not lie in rule by a superior class of men, as the British insisted. Rather, it rested on the creation of a self-sustaining politics. The makers of the Indian Constitution instituted universal suffrage amid poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. They crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian Constitution—the longest in the world—came into effect. More than half of the world’s constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries characterized by low levels of economic growth and education, where voting populations are deeply divided by race, religion, and ethnicity. And these countries have democratized at once, not gradually. The events and ideas of India’s Founding Moment offer a natural reference point for these nations where democracy and constitutionalism have arrived simultaneously, and they remind us of the promise and challenge of self-rule today.
