The Wilsonian Moment

The Wilsonian Moment

Author: Erez Manela

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-07-23

Total Pages: 350

ISBN-13: 019988417X

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During the Paris Peace Conference of 1919, while key decisions were debated by the victorious Allied powers, a multitude of smaller nations and colonies held their breath, waiting to see how their fates would be decided. President Woodrow Wilson, in his Fourteen Points, had called for "a free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims," giving equal weight would be given to the opinions of the colonized peoples and the colonial powers. Among those nations now paying close attention to Wilson's words and actions were the budding nationalist leaders of four disparate non-Western societies--Egypt, India, China, and Korea. That spring, Wilson's words would help ignite political upheavals in all four of these countries. This book is the first to place the 1919 Revolution in Egypt, the Rowlatt Satyagraha in India, the May Fourth movement in China, and the March First uprising in Korea in the context of a broader "Wilsonian moment" that challenged the existing international order. Using primary source material from America, Europe, and Asia, historian Erez Manela tells the story of how emerging nationalist movements appropriated Wilsonian language and adapted it to their own local culture and politics as they launched into action on the international stage. The rapid disintegration of the Wilsonian promise left a legacy of disillusionment and facilitated the spread of revisionist ideologies and movements in these societies; future leaders of Third World liberation movements--Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, and Jawaharlal Nehru, among others--were profoundly shaped by their experiences at the time. The importance of the Paris Peace Conference and Wilson's influence on international affairs far from the battlefields of Europe cannot be underestimated. Now, for the first time, we can clearly see just how the events played out at Versailles sparked a wave of nationalism that is still resonating globally today.


Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930

Hindu Mahasabha in Colonial North India, 1915-1930

Author: Prabhu Bapu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 0415671655

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Hindu nationalism has emerged as a political ideology represented by the Hindu Mahasabha. This book explores the campaign for Hindu unity and organisation in the context of the Hindu-Muslim conflict in colonial north India in the early twentieth century. It argues that India's partition in 1947 was a result of the campaign and politics of the Hindu rightwing rather than the Islamist politics of the Muslim League alone. The book explains that the Mahasabha articulated Hindu nationalist ideology as a means of constructing a distinct Hindu political identity and unity among the Hindus in conflict with the Muslims in the country. It looks at the Mahasabha’s ambivalence with the Indian National Congress due to an extreme ideological opposition, and goes on to argue that the Mahasabha had its ideological focus on an anti-Muslim antagonism rather than the anti-British struggle for India’s independence, adding to the difficulties in the negotiations on Hindu-Muslim representation in the country. The book suggests that the Mahasabha had a limited class and regional base and was unable to generate much in the way of a mass movement of its own, but developed a quasi-military wing, besides its involvement in a number of popular campaigns. Bridging the gap in Indian historiography by focusing on the development and evolution of Hindu nationalism in its formative period, this book is a useful study for students and scholars of Asian Studies and Political History.


Changing Homelands

Changing Homelands

Author: Neeti Nair

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-04-01

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0674061152

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Changing Homelands offers a startling new perspective on what was and was not politically possible in late colonial India. In this highly readable account of the partition in the Punjab, Neeti Nair rejects the idea that essential differences between the Hindu and Muslim communities made political settlement impossible. Far from being an inevitable solution, the idea of partition was a very late, stunning surprise to the majority of Hindus in the region. In tracing the political and social history of the Punjab from the early years of the twentieth century, Nair overturns the entrenched view that Muslims were responsible for the partition of India. Some powerful Punjabi Hindus also preferred partition and contributed to its adoption. Almost no one, however, foresaw the deaths and devastation that would follow in its wake. Though much has been written on the politics of the Muslim and Sikh communities in the Punjab, Nair is the first historian to focus on the Hindu minority, both before and long after the divide of 1947. She engages with politics in post-Partition India by drawing from oral histories that reveal the complex relationship between memory and history—a relationship that continues to inform politics between India and Pakistan.


The Butcher of Amritsar

The Butcher of Amritsar

Author: Nigel Collett

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2006-10-15

Total Pages: 614

ISBN-13: 9781852855758

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On 13 April 1919, General Reginald Dyer marched a squad of Indian soldiers into the Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, and opened fire without warning on a crowd gathered to hear political speeches. This is an account of the massacre set in the context of a biography of a man whose attitudes reflected many of the views common in the Raj.


Self and Sovereignty

Self and Sovereignty

Author: Ayesha Jalal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2002-01-04

Total Pages: 653

ISBN-13: 1134599382

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Self and Sovereignty surveys the role of individual Muslim men and women within India and Pakistan from 1850 through to decolonisation and the partition period. Commencing in colonial times, this book explores and interprets the historical processes through which the perception of the Muslim individual and the community of Islam has been reconfigured over time. Self and Sovereignty examines the relationship between Islam and nationalism and the individual, regional, class and cultural differences that have shaped the discourse and politics of Muslim identity. As well as fascinating discussion of political and religious movements, culture and art, this book includes analysis of: * press, poetry and politics in late nineteenth century India * the politics of language and identity - Hindi, Urdu and Punjabi * Muslim identity, cultural differnce and nationalism * the Punjab and the politics of Union and Disunion * the creation of Pakistan Covering a period of immense upheaval and sometimes devastating violence, this work is an important and enlightening insight into the history of Muslims in South Asia.


The British Left and India

The British Left and India

Author: Nicholas Owen

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2007-11-15

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0191528412

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From the formation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 to the winning of independence in 1947, this book traces the complex and often troubled relationship between anti-imperialist campaigners in Britain and in India. Nicholas Owen traces the efforts of British Radicals and socialists to identify forms of anti-imperialism in India which fitted comfortably with their existing beliefs and their sense of how authentic progressive movements were supposed to work. On the other side of the relationship, he charts the trajectory of the Indian National Congress, as it shifted from appeals couched in language familiar to British progressives to the less familiar vocabulary and techniques of Mahatma Gandhi. The new Gandhian methods of self-reliance had unwelcome implications for the work that the British supporters of Congress had traditionally undertaken, leading to the collapse of their main organisation, and the precipitation of anti-imperialist work into the turbulent cross-currents of left-wing British politics. Metropolitan anti-imperialism became largely a function of other commitments, whether communist, theosophical, pacifist, socialist or anti-fascist. Revealing the strengths and weaknesses of these connections, The British Left and India looks at the ultimate failure to create the durable alliance between anti-imperialists which the British Empire's governors had always feared. Drawing on a wide range of newly available archival material in Britain and India, including the records of campaigning organizations, political parties, the British government and the imperial security services, this book is a powerful account of the diverse and fragmented world of British metropolitan anti-imperialism.


Accessions List, South Asia

Accessions List, South Asia

Author: Library of Congress. Library of Congress Office, New Delhi

Publisher:

Published: 1993

Total Pages: 1224

ISBN-13:

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Records publications acquired from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, by the U.S. Library of Congress Offices in New Delhi, India, and Karachi, Pakistan.