Offering the first long-duration analysis of the relationship between the state and religion in South Asia, this book looks at the nature and origins of Indian secularism. It interrogates the proposition that communalism in India is wholly a product of colonial policy and modernisation, questions whether the Indian state has generally been a benign, or disruptive, influence on public religious life, and evaluates the claim that the region has spawned a culture of practical toleration.

The book is structured around six key arenas of interaction between state and religion: cow worship...

The book maps developments in public health, the emergence of specialised medical institutions, the influence of western medicine on indigenous medical communities (and their patients) and the interaction between them. Two comparatively large states (Mysore and Travancore), considered progressive and enlightened, and some of the 24 Orissa Princely States, seen as backward and despotic, will be at the centre of investigation. Contentious issues currently debated in the existing scholarship on medicine in British India and other colonies will be explored (such as the indigenisation of health...

In the period between the 1770s and 1840s, through the process of colonial state formation, the early colonial state in India was able to harness and extract vast amounts of agrarian wealth in north India. However, little is known of the histories of the Indian scribes and the role they played in shaping the early patterns of British colonial rule.
This book offers a new way of investigating the colonial state s origins in north India. It examines how the formation of early agrarian revenue settlements exacerbated an extant late Mughal taxation tradition, and how the success of British...

This book presents a study of the international dimensions of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan from before its outbreak in October 1947 until the Tashkent Summit in January 1966. By focusing on Kashmir s under-researched transnational dimensions, it represents a different approach to this intractable territorial conflict. Concentrating on the global context(s) in which the dispute unfolded, it argues that the dispute s evolution was determined by international concerns that existed from before and went beyond the Indian subcontinent.

Based on new and diverse official and...

When the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) assumed power in India in 1998 as the largest party of the National Democratic Alliance, it soon became evident that it prioritized educational reforms. Under BJP rule, a reorganization of the National Council of Educational Research and Training occurred, and in 2002 four new history textbooks were published.

This book examines the new textbooks which were introduced, considering them to be integral to the BJP s political agenda. It analyses the ways in which their narrative and explanatory frameworks defined and invoked Hindu...

Through the lens of cinema, this book explores the ways in which the United States, Britain and India impacted each other politically, culturally and ideologically. It argues that American films of the 1920s posited alternative notions of whiteness and the West to that of Britain, which stood for democracy and social mobility even at a time of virulent racism.

The book examines the impact that the American cinema has on Indian filmmakers of the period, who were integrating its conventions with indigenous artistic traditions to articulate an Indian modernity. It considers the way...