THE MAKING OF A NATION: ESSAYS IN INDIAN HISTORY AND POLITICS.

The transformation, within the framework of the history of India, of a classical civilization into a modern Nation State is a process of profound interest to social historians and scholars in the human sciences. The social, the biographical, the institutional, and last but not the least, the intellectual facets of this phenomenon are explored in the essays incorporated in this book. These essays are further held together by the belief that historical explorations not only provide clues to the past of a society; but they also illumine the present and provide the basis for its reconstruction in the future.

Table of Contents

• Preface vii
• Acknowledgements ix
• 1. From Swaraj to Puma Swaraj: A Review of the Nationalist Struggle in the 1920s and the 1930s 1
• 2. A Review of the Historical Literature on the Struggle for Freedom in India 59
• 3. Motilal Nehru: Portrait of a Nationalist 79
• 4. Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Poona Pact, 1932 136
• 5. The Role of Urban Society in Nationalist Politics 160 6. The Secular Culture of India 174
• 7. The Past as a Mirror of the Future 194
• 8. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian National Congress and the Anti-Fascist Struggle (1939-1945) 209
• 9. The Historical Roots of Democracy in India 229
• 10. The Place of Oral Sources in Historical Research 245