Political Imaginaries in Twentieth-Century India

This volume reconsiders India’s 20th century though a specific focus on the concepts, conjunctures and currency of its distinct political imaginaries. Spanning the divide between independence and partition, it highlights recent historical debates that have sought to move away from a nation-centred mode of political history to a broader history of politics that considers the complex contexts within which different political imaginaries emerged in 20th century India.

Representing the first attempt to grasp the shifting modes and meanings of the ‘political’ in India, this book explores forms of mass protest, radical women’s politics, civil rights, democracy, national wealth and mobilization against the indentured-labor system, amongst other themes. In linking ‘the political’ to shifts in historical temporality, Political Imaginaries in 20th century India extends beyond the interdisciplinary arena of South Asian studies to cognate late colonial and post-colonial formations in the twentieth century and contribute to the ‘political turn’ in scholarship.

Manu Goswami is Associate Professor of History at New York University, USA. The author of Producing India: From Colonial Economy to National Space (Chicago, 2004), her expertise includes 19th and 20th century India, history of economic thought, political economy and social theory.

Mrinalini Sinha is Alice Freeman Palmer Professor of History at University of Michigan, USA. A historian of Modern South Asia and the British Empire, her books include Colonial Masculinity: the ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late 19th century (Manchester, 1995) and Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Duke, 2006).