Author: Robert W Stern
Publisher: Cambridge University press
Year: 2003
Language: English
Pages: 250
ISBN/UPC (if available): 052154081X
Description
This revised edition of Robert Stern's book brings India's story up-to-date. This is a colorful, readable and comprehensive introduction to modern India. A long, hard look at the most enduring democracy in the developing world.
Since its original publication in 1993, much has altered and, yet, central to the author's argument remains his belief in the remarkable continuity and vitality of India's social systems and its resilience in the face of change.
In a journey through its family households and villages, the author explains its long-lived and little understood caste and class systems, its venerable faiths and extraordinary ethnic diversity, its history as 'the jewel in the crown' of British imperialism and its post-Independence career as a major agricultural and industrial nation. While paradoxes abound in an India that is constantly transforming, Stern demonstrates how and why it remains the largest and most enduring democracy in the developing world.
PRAISE FOR THE FIRST EDITION:
This volume contains some of the most intelligent writing on contemporary India that one is likely to encounter .. An engaging register of language and argument .. A unique publication.
=Burton Stein, South Asia Research
A picture of India that cannot be praised too highly .. Absolutely essential reading.
=Gilbert Etienne, Review Tiers-Monde
The considerable achievement of this book is to explain so much also clearly and so briefly.
= R K Newman, International Affairs
He knows his India.
=G P Deshpande, Economic and Political Weekly
A series of tightly constructed, closely argued essays .. A neat yet compendious volume.
= Peter Reeves, Campus Magazine
Of great scope and sweep and densely packed with rich historical and contemporary data .. Comprehensive and provocative .. Fascinating reading.
= P Radhakrishnan, Indian Review of Books
Contents
List of maps and tables
Preface to the Second Edition
Glossary
INTRODUCTION
Change, the Societies of India and Indian Society
PART I: THE CHANGING COUNTRYSIDE
Families and Villages
Caste
Class
Homelands and States
PART II: CHANGE FROM ABOVE
British Imperialism, Indian Nationalism and Muslim Separatism
The Indian Union in a Changing India
APPENDIX ONE:
Major Political Events in the related Histories of British Imperialism and Indian Nationalism 1858-1947
APPENDIX TWO:
Major Political Events in the History of the Indian Union 1947-2002
Notes
Guide to further reading
Index