The historiography of the Sannyasi Rebellion has a chequered career. The first book about that uprising was a historical novel by Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay, Ananda Math (1882). If Ananda Math is seen as an index of Bankim’s historical consciousness, one has…
Deep Kanta Lahiri Choudhury, Telegraphic Imperialism: Crisis and Panic in the Indian Empire, c. 1830, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2010, pp. xii+277. In 1870 Bombay and London were connected by telegraph. According to received wisdom, this technological leap enabled greater metropolitan…
Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendency of Capital, Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2005; paperback edition 2008. Capital and the capitalist economy have been striding the world for five centuries. Have they won its victory for…
Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire, Penguin/Allen Lane, 2011, 388 pages, Rs 699. Subhas Chandra Bose is one of Indian history’s most enigmatic and emotive personalities. Yet, despite being so widely revered and…