Book Review – Kama Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text

Kama Maclean, A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text,
Penguin India, Gurgaon, 2016, xvii+305 pages, Rs 599.

The historiography on militant and revolutionary anti-colonialism in India is witnessing a dawn of a new era. For decades, this field was dominated by hagiographical writings intent on valorising the courage and spirit of martyrdom of revolutionaries in order to argue for their inclusion as important figures in the annals of mainstream narrative of the history of Indian nationalism. Yet, all these efforts bore little success as the latter sel- dom considered these votaries of violent resistance and individual ‘terrorist’ actions as anything other than a nuisance for the non-violent Gandhian anti-colonial, mass movement. 1 With the rise of the subaltern, Dalit, fem- inist, post-colonial and other historiographical perspectives in the last few decades, criticisms of such Congress-centred nationalist narratives of India’s anticolonial struggle have abounded. Historians have become increasingly aware about how, in the course of fighting the British Raj, the Congress was simultaneously not only transforming itself into the ‘Raj’ 2 but also marginalising and delegitimising different or contrarian views on the nature of anti-colonial politics in India. This has led to a renewed interest in the revolutionary movements of twentieth century which always remained in the popular perception as a crucial component of the anti-colonial strug- gle, while being vocal critics of Congress’s politics.