Pulse en una miniatura para ir a Google Books.
Cargando... Shadows at Noon: The South Asian Twentieth Centurypor Joya Chatterji
Ninguno Cargando...
Inscríbete en LibraryThing para averiguar si este libro te gustará. Actualmente no hay Conversaciones sobre este libro. sin reseñas | añadir una reseña
Shadows at Noon is an ambitious synthesis of decades of research and scholarship which explores the key strands of South Asian history in the twentieth century with clarity and authority. Unlike other narrative histories of the subcontinent that concentrate exclusively on politics, here food, leisure and the household are given equal importance to discussions of nationhood, the development of the state and patterns of migration. While it tells the subcontinent's story from the British Raj to independence and partition and on to the forging of the modern nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, the book's structure is thematic rather than chronological. Each of the chapters illuminates on overarching theme or sphere that has shaped South Asia over the course of the century. This format allows the reader to explore particular issues - such as the changing character of nationalism or food consumption - over time and in depth. Shadows at Noon is a bold, innovative and personal work that pushes back against standard narratives of 'inherent' differences between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Its purpose is to make contemporary South Asia intelligible to readers who are fascinated by the subcontinent's cultural vibrancy and diversity but are often perplexed by its social and political make-up. And it illuminates the many aspects that its people have in common rather than what divides them. No se han encontrado descripciones de biblioteca. |
Debates activosNinguno
Google Books — Cargando... GénerosSistema Decimal Melvil (DDC)954.04History and Geography Asia India and South Asia 1947–1971Clasificación de la Biblioteca del CongresoValoraciónPromedio: No hay valoraciones.¿Eres tú?Conviértete en un Autor de LibraryThing. |
Unlike Dutt and Guha, Chatterji is the real thing, a card-carrying member of the bhadralok, as she time and again reminds us in her new book. Shadows at Noon is a cheerful history of the subcontinent, by turns erudite, eclectic, analytical, gossipy and prolix – all instantly recognisable bhadralok qualities. In style and detail, it effortlessly surpasses Guha’s equally colossal India After Gandhi. The latter has gone through many reprints, selling hundreds of thousands of copies. By all accounts, though, it was a terribly conventional, even triumphalist, account of the wonder that is Indian democracy. Also scarcely forgivable was its unabashed bird’s-eye view. Hardly so much as a word was to be found on the lower orders in its pages.
Thankfully, these defects are corrected in Chatterji’s book. In Modi’s India, it would be injudicious to gawk, as Guha did, in admiration at Indian democracy. Chatterji is more heedful of the developments that led India to its current illiberal impasse. Likewise, though they often appear in the form of the help in Chatterji’s household, the working class isn’t absent in these pages. Later chapters supply ample room to sex workers and snake charmers, among other subalterns. Shadows at Noon is a long but brisk read, enlivened by opinions on everything from textbook reform to travel advice: ‘If you can, visit Lahore’s Old City.’
What we have is a gently revisionist account of an enduring, if also ever-tottering, democracy. It is, on the face of it, a history not only of India but also its Muslim neighbours, though Pakistan and Bangladesh only have walk-on parts. Bengal gets top billing. South India and the mofussil are mostly ignored. But even as a history of India, the book has much to commend it.
Indian anticolonialism, Chatterji observes, had its dark side. Nationalists could twist themselves into pretzels, going so far as to decry the Age of Consent Act of 1891 as a colonial intrusion upon Indian values, of which marital rape apparently was one; the act had been prompted by the rape and murder of a 10-year-old girl by her 35-year-old husband. Refreshingly, there’s no halo around Gandhi. In Chatterji’s hands, the Mahatma comes down to earth as a befuddled soul perhaps too influenced by the Christian esotericism he imbibed in London. No radical, she writes, ‘Gandhi was instead an ally of capitalists and the caste order, a friend of patriarchy’.
Unusually for an Indian historian, Chatterji rightly lays the blame for Partition on the Congress, whose Hindu nationalists did much to push Muslims into the arms of the secessionist League. The creation of Pakistan was perfectly avoidable; both sides came close to burying the hatchet with the Lucknow Pact of 1916, and then again with the Cabinet Mission Plan 30 years later. Sadly, both proved inconclusive.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Pratinav Anil is the author of Another India: The Making of the World’s Largest Democracy, 1947-1977 (Hurst, 2023) and a lecturer at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.