Author: C A Bayly
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2001
Language: English
Pages: 338
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195658418
Description
This book deals with the ideological and social background of India's regional and pan-Indian nationalist movements that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century and dwells on patriotism and ethical government in the making of modern India.
This book deals with the ideological and social background of India's regional and pan-Indian nationalist movements that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century. The author identifies patriotism as the central concept of these movements as well as in the formation of modern government. Defined as a complex sentiment, patriotism entails attachment, ideologies, and theories of government that engaged the rulers and populace of regional homelands over the eighteenth century and during the early phase of colonial rule.
Professor Bayly suggests that traditions of remembered patriotism during this period formed the basis of the ideas and institutions of later Indian nationalism. He also dwells on related notions, such as resistance, and the origins of 'swadeshi' and communalism. The book ends with a reflective autobiographical chapter on the author's intellectual origins and career as a historian of India. The book, by a major historian of modern India, is indispensable for those interested in India history, culture, and politics.
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS:
We are in Bayly's debt for demonstrating, with rich empirical data, that a number of local and regional contexts of patriotism existed throughout the nineteenth century.
—Biblio
Bayly prefers to see colonialism not as a disruptive intervention in the Indian economy and society but as a continuity of some of the traditions that had been created before the advent of the British.
—The Telegraph
Contents
Patriotism and Political Ethics in Indian History
The Consolidation of Indian Patrias and the Colonial Encounter
Patriotism and Ethical Government, c. 1780-1860
Patriotism and Nationalism
From Ritual to Ceremony: Death Ritual and Society in Hindu North India since 1600
The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and Indian Society, 1700-1930
The Pre-history of 'Communalism'? Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860
The British Military-Fiscal State and Indigenous Resistance: India 1750-1820
Returning the British to South Asia History: The Limits of Colonial Hegemony
Epilogue: Historiographical and Autobiographical Note
Index