A History of Modern India

Ishita Banerjee-Dube is Professor of History at the Centre for Asian and African Studies, El Colegio de Mexico, Mexico City, and a member of the National System of Researchers (SNI), Mexico, where she holds the highest rank. Her authored books include Divine Affairs (2001), Religion, Law, and Power (2007) and, in Spanish, Fronteras del Hinduismo (2007). Among her eight edited volumes are Unbecoming Modern (2005), Caste in History (2008) and Ancient to Modern (2009).

• Photographs, maps, posters and figures; About the author; Acknowledgements; Prologue; 1. The colourful world of the eighteenth century; 2. Emergence of the Company Raj; 3. An inaugural century; 4. Creating anew; 5. Imagining India; 6. Challenge and rupture; 7. The Mahatma phenomenon; 8. Difficulties and initiatives; 9. Many pathways of a nation; 10. The tumultuous forties; 11. 1947 and after; Bibliography; Index.

'Through a dynamic combination of history-telling and in-depth historiographical analysis, Ishita Banerjee-Dube's A History of Modern India breaks exciting new ground for students and scholars alike. She discards the familiar, and all too predictable, colony-to-nation narrative for an approach that exposes the troubled and uncertain course of modern Indian history, unravels the startling heterogeneity of that history, explores the radical possibilities of recent historical reinterpretation, and provides fascinating insights into the conflicts and contradictions that make up India's multiple and many layered pasts. This imaginative rethinking of India's history and the complex fashioning of its modernity deserves a wide and appreciative audience.' David Arnold, Emeritus Professor, University of Warwick