A01=Diya Gupta
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Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Diya Gupta
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Bengal Famine
Bengali
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJ
Category=JHB
Category=NHF
COP=United Kingdom
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
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eq_non-fiction
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India
Indian National Army
Language_English
PA=Available
Photography
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
Second World War
softlaunch
WW2
Product details
- ISBN 9781787389458
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 02 Mar 2023
- Publisher: C Hurst & Co Publishers Ltd
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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In 1940s India, revolutionary and nationalistic feeling surged against colonial subjecthood and imperial war. Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British during the Second World War, while 3 million civilians were killed by the war-induced Bengal Famine, and Indian National Army soldiers fought against the British for Indian independence. This captivating new history shines a spotlight on emotions as a way of unearthing these troubled and contested experiences, exposing the personal as political. Diya Gupta draws upon photographs, letters, memoirs, novels, poetry and philosophical essays, in both English and Bengali languages, to weave a compelling tapestry of emotions felt by Indians in service and at home during the war. She brings to life an unknown sepoy in the Middle East yearning for home, and anti- fascist activist Tara Ali Baig; a disillusioned doctor on the Burma frontline, and Sukanta Bhattacharya's modernist poetry of hunger; Mulk Raj Anand's revolutionary home front, and Rabindranath Tagore's critique of civilisation. This vivid book recovers a truly global history of the Second World War, revealing the crucial importance of personal documentation in challenging a traditional focus on the wartime experiences of European populations. Seen through ordinary Indian eyes, this was not the 'good' war.
Diya Gupta is a literary and cultural historian, and Lecturer in Public History at City, University of London. Formerly a 'Past and Present' fellow at the Royal Historical Society and Institute of Historical Research, she takes multilingual approaches to life-writing, visual culture and literature, particularly related to war. See https:// www.diyagupta.co.uk.
