IR Aficionado

Photo courtesy: Amazon.co.uk Indians hold passionate views about the leaders of their anti-colonial struggle. Most are reverential and the foremost figure in the liberation movement pantheon, Mohandas Gandhi, commands the kind of devotion that is generally reserved for a divinely ordained prophet. The fulsome titles “Father of the Nation” and “Mahatma” or Great Soul speak to the unquestioning veneration of a man who is considered a saintly paragon of virtue. Mohammad Ali Jinnah is similarly glorified in Pakistan (which was also part of erstwhile British India), although with relatively less melodrama. He is known as “Qaid-e Azam” or the Great Leader. Extolling the founding fathers of their countries, however, does not incline people of either country to live by the principles that they fought and stood for. Pakistan is worlds apart from the secular republic that the Qaid-e Azam imagined. Intolerance towards minorities, violence against women and a sham democracy characterise present-da...

Few authors can deal with the colossal history of the Indian subcontinent right from the arrival in its land of the central Asian adventurer Babur in the early 16th century all the way through its dominion by the British, established effectively in the mid 18th century and consecrated by the recognition of the crown’s suzerainty in mid 19th century and their subsequent exit in the mid 20th century, and down to the trajectory the newly independent India took in the political, economic and social spheres over the next thirty years, in a single volume other than Percival Spear. A History of India Volume 2 is an account of almost all significant events that transpired in the subcontinent over four and a half centuries. The author must be commended for his temerity to take upon himself such a monumental task. Let us consider in detail how well he has fared in accomplishing it. The book begins in the early 16th century, when much of North India was in a turmoil, with feeble rulers occupyi...