The Rediscovery of India

What makes India a nation? What has held its many disparate societies with their diverse, sometimes conflicting, narratives together for more than sixty years? What has allowed India to sustain its commitment to the democratic process, given its location in a region that is largely undemocratic? In this magisterial analysis of the last five hundred years of Indian history, Meghnad Desai looks at India’s colonial past, its struggle for independence and its many contemporary conundrums, to discover answers to the questions that have confronted India-watchers for decades.

Rejecting much received wisdom, including narratives fashioned by India’s ruling establishment, Meghnad Desai goes back to the beginnings of the East–West encounter at the end of the fifteenth century. He tracks its impact on the cultures and politics of the present day, from the emergence of new classes under colonialism, the influence of Jawaharlal Nehru and Mahatma Gandhi on the idea of Indian nationhood, to the entirely parallel discourses that developed in North and South India. Yet this trajectory, this outcome, was not inevitable. Through a series of ‘Counterfactual Boxes’ Meghnad Desai analyses the accepted defining moments of India’s past and suggests alternative courses that history could so easily have taken.

‘‘ ‘Meghnad Desai’s learned, elegant and provocative book is sure to rekindle the debate about the idea of India, its political and cultural roots and meanings. The reader will enjoy joining the author on his journey of rediscovery, as he deftly situates the unfolding of India’s modern history in its global context.’’
Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of History & Director, South Asia Initiative, Harvard University