Historiography and Writing Postcolonial India [Hardcover]

A critical examination of post-colonial Indian history-writing.

In the years preceding formal Independence from British colonial rule, Indians found themselves responding to the panorama of sin and suffering that constituted the modern present in a variety of imaginative ways. This book is a critical analysis of the uses made of Indias often millennial past by nationalist ideologues who sought a specific solution to Indias predicament on its way to becoming a post-colonial state. From independence to the present, it considers the competing visions of Indias liberation from her apocalyptical present to be found in the thinking of Gandhi, V. D. Savarkar, Nehru and B. R. Ambedkar as well as V. S. Naipaul and Salman Rushdie. It examines some of the archetypal elements in historical consciousness that find their echo in often brutal unhistorical ways in everyday life.               

This book is a valuable resource for researchers interested in South Asian History, Historiography or Theory of History, Cultural Studies, English Literature, Post Colonial Writing and Literary Criticism.

Preface: Historiography and Writing Postcolonial India  Part 1: Re-thinking Indian Histories  1. Historiography and Narrative  2. The Historical Sense  3. Hindutva and Writing Postcolonial India  4. B.R. Ambedkar and the Hindu Past  Part 2: Re-imagining Indian Pasts  5. V.S. Naipauls India: History and the Myth of Antiquity  6. Salman Rushdie and theAgon of the Past.  Conclusion

Naheem Jabbar is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Portsmouth, UK.