The Construction Of History And Nationalism In India

Most studies on nations and nationalism argue that history, or more precisely a 'common past', is crucial for the process of national identity building. This book focuses on the construction, elaboration and negotiation of the narratives that have become official history in India.

Sardar Kavalam Madhava Panikkar (or K. M. Panikkar) was an Indian scholar, journalist, historian, administrator and diplomat. He was born to Puthillathu Parameswaran Namboodiri and Chalayil Kunjikutti Kunjamma in the Kingdom of Travancore, then a princely state in the British Indian Empire on June 3, 1895. Primarily, this book is neither a defence nor a criticism of a policy,—it is an account of a people’s awakening. There seems to be in human nature some original perversity which preordains, for every national movement that is a growth, three stages of maltreatment. At first it is treated with indifference, then it is ridiculed, then it is abused. Not until it has outlived these experiences of adolescence will men deal with it on its merits.

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When the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power in India in 1998 as the largest party of the National Democratic Alliance, it soon became evident that it prioritized educational reforms. Under BJP rule, a reorganization of the National Council of Educational Research and Training occurred, and in 2002 four new history textbooks were published. This book examines the new textbooks which were introduced, considering them to be integral to the BJP’s political agenda. It analyses the ways in which their narrative and explanatory frameworks defined and invoked Hindu identity. Employing the concept of decontextualization, the author argues that notions of Hindu cultural similarity were conveyed, particularly as the textbooks paid scarce attention to social, geographical and temporal contexts in their approaches to Indian history. The book shows that intrinsic to the textbooks’ emphasis on similarity is a systematic backgrounding of any references to internal lines of division within the Hindu community. Through a comparison with earlier textbooks, it sheds light on the contested nature of history writing in India, especially in terms of nation building and identity construction. This issue is also highly relevant in India today due to the electoral success of the BJP in 2014, and the efforts of the Hindu nationalist organization Vishwa Hindu Parishad to construct a coherent Hinduism. Arguing that the textbooks operate according to the BJP’s ideology of Hindu cultural nationalism, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian studies, contemporary history, the uses of history, identity politics and Hindu nationalism.

This book gives a clear, comprehensive account of the complex factors which led to the rise and eventual success of Indian nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The groups and individuals responsible for inaugurating the first Western-style political organisations are examined against their social background, and the part played by the Indian National Congress in the struggle for Independence is then analysed in detail. The later chapters examine the emergence of Gandhi as a national leader and consider the success of the non-violent techniques which he espoused. The history concludes with the attainment of independence and traces developments in the successor nations up to the present day, Rajiv Gandhi as Prime Minister of India, the coming of V.P. Singh as Prime Minister, up to the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi in May 1991.

Partha Mitter's book is a pioneering study of the history of modern art on the Indian subcontinent from 1850 to 1922. The author tells the story of Indian art during the Raj, set against the interplay of colonialism and nationalism. The work addresses the tensions and contradictions that attended the advent of European naturalism in India, as part of the imperial design for the westernisation of the elite, and traces the artistic evolution from unquestioning westernisation to the construction of Hindu national identity. Through a wide range of literary and pictorial sources, Art and Nationalism in Colonial India balances the study of colonial cultural institutions and networks with the ideologies of the nationalist and intellectual movements which followed. The result is a book of immense significance, both in the context of South Asian history and in the wider context of art history.

This book offers interdisciplinary perspectives on nationalism in India and examines the ways in which literary-textual representations intervene in debates regarding Hindu, Muslim and other forms of Indian nationalism. The book interrogates questions of nationalism and nationhood in relation to literary and cultural texts, historic-linguistic contexts and new developments in queer nationalism and ecological nationalism. It adopts a nation-wide emphasis, including chapters on Northeast India and other regions that have been historically underrepresented in studies of Indian nationalism. Moreover, the volume explores a rich variety of literary works by various writers over the past two centuries that have created, enshrined and contested ideas pivotal to the development of Indian nationalism. Located in a range of disciplines, contributors bring extensive expertise in Indian literature, language and culture to the question of nationalism. The chapters challenge many of the accepted ideas on nationalism and critically examine the politics behind such nationalisms. Moving beyond an approach to Indian nationalism based exclusively in the historicist-political paradigm, this timely book challenges established ideas in Indian nationalism and critically examines the politics of nationalisms in terms of textual representations. The book will be of interest to researchers working on South Asian studies, including Indian culture, history, literature and politics.