V.S. Srinivasa Sastri

Vineet Thakur is a university lecturer at Leiden University, Netherlands. He studied at JNU (New Delhi) and has previously worked at Ambedkar University (Delhi), University of Johannesburg and SOAS London. He was a fellow at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, Amsterdam, and Smuts Vesting Fellow at Cambridge University. He is the author of India’s First Diplomat: V.S. Srinivasa Sastri and the Making of Liberal Internationalism (2021); The Imperial Discipline: Race and the Founding of International Relations (with Alexander Davis and Peter Vale); South Africa, Race and the Making of International Relations (2020—with Peter Vale, and winner of the Francesco Guicciardini Prize for Best Book in Historical International Relations); Postscripts on Independence: Foreign Policy Discourses in India and South Africa (2018) and Jan Smuts and the Indian Question (2017).

• 1. Introduction 2. The Making of a Liberal 3. The Politics of Reforms 4. An Indian Envoy in the Commonwealth 5. Dominion or Independence 6. Civility: ‘A Charity that Never Fails’ 7. In the Shadow of Rama 8. Conclusion

"After his path-breaking book on V.S. Srinivasa Sastri’s diplomat career, between these new covers Vineet Thakur brings the subject home. Weaving historical biography with political thought, he has written an impressive account of the life – and the politics – of a near-forgotten liberal... another important exploration of liberalism's global lives."Peter Vale, Senior Research Fellow, Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa"This is a short, sharp and eloquent introduction to the politics and thought of Srinivasa Sastri. It will rescue from oblivion a fascinating and forceful figure in Indian history. In doing so it also sheds light on the dilemmas of Indian Liberalism, and its complicated relationship to Congress."Pratap Bhanu Mehta