Modern India is the world's largest democracy, a
sprawling, polyglot nation containing one-sixth of all
humankind. The existence of such a complex and
distinctive democratic regime qualifies as one of the
world's bona fide political miracles. Furthermore,
India's leading political thinkers have often served as
its most influential political actors--think of Gandhi,
whose collected works run to more than ninety volumes,
or Ambedkar, or Nehru, who recorded their most eloquent
theoretical reflections at the same time as they strove
to set the delicate machinery of Indian democracy on a
coherent and just path. Out of the speeches and writings
of these thinker-activists, Ramachandra Guha has built
the first major anthology of Indian social and political
thought. Makers of Modern India collects the work of
nineteen of India's foremost generators of political
sentiment, from those whose names command instant global
recognition to pioneering subaltern and feminist
thinkers whose works have until now remained obscure and
inaccessible. Ranging across manifold languages and
cultures, and addressing every crucial theme of modern
Indian history--race, religion, language, caste, gender,
colonialism, nationalism, economic development,
violence, and nonviolence--Makers of Modern India
provides an invaluable roadmap to Indian political
debate. An extensive introduction, biographical sketches
of each figure, and guides to further reading make this
work a rich resource for anyone interested in India and
the ways its leading political minds have grappled with
the problems that have increasingly come to define the
modern world.
|
|