Individuals and Ideas in Modern India- Nine Interpretative Studies (An Old and Rare Book)

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The origins of our Individuals and Ideas in Modern India go back five years, when a student of mine-James Wilson (who received his Ph.D. in history from the University of London) -wrote a particularly good paper for a seminar at the University of Hawaii Other research papers of high quality were also prepared by students Barbara Southard Choudhury and Gerald Reardon. All three of these are included in this volume. With the subsequent help and criticism of my friend and col- league, Dr. Lee Siegel, I invited contributions from the U.S. mainland and India. The present volume is the result of that process, as is another volume dealing with the pre-modern period, Individuals and Ideas in Traditional India, now in progress, will be completed next year.

Individuals and Ideas in Modern India: Nine Interpretative Studies, deals exclusively with modern India. The contributors to this volume are scholars from many disciplines. They come from different universities as well as from Hawaii. All deal with modern India-India in contact with western powers on its own soil-from the arrival of the Portuguese (1498) to the defeat of Janata and the return of Mrs. Indira Gandhi to power (1980) subsequent to the period of "India in Shackles during the Emergency (1975-1977)," as Ambassador Palkhivala called it in a speech in Honolulu.

This volume presents perspectives from the Humanities and the Social Sciences on some of the most important and enduring individuals and ideas in India. It is hoped that they will prove of interest and some value to the general reader as well as the scholar, and will encourage them to pursue these topics further with the aid of notes, references and bibliographies.

...the religious bent may make man fit for the most daring revolt of the spirit..... - Karl Polanyi.

Crane Brinton writes that "... in human history there are no important facts unrelated to ideas, no important ideas un- related to facts..." and, of course, both ideas as well as social facts are articulated by people within a specific environment. It is a people's actions and interactions in a given environment whose record and interpretation constitute the subject matter of history and the history of a people. Yet in every society certain individuals as well as precepts become more prominent and come to dominate and mold the course of events. India too has had its share of prominent people and dominant ideas. In this volume, we attempt to deal with some of them, though not necessarily the same choice that others may make. Our selections represent multi-disciplinary perspectives from the 1970s. They cover a period of some 450 years in India's past, i.e., since the arrival of the Portuguese in 1498 to the demise of the brief, but bewildering, dictatorship of Indira Gandhi in 1977, and her return to power in 1980. Though spanning several centuries in India's history, these topics are important and continue to be of interest until today. The nine studies presented here are written by scholars, both from India and the U.S., some of whom studied at the University of Hawaii with the editor. Each interpretative essay deals with a significant idea or individual in modern India which has seldom been treated with the same rigor and thoroughness in other.

Historical treatments of the period. Our main purpose in collecting these papers is to provide new perspectives by involving a number of scholars in different academic fields. The authors had written these papers initially for a seminar, dissertation or a conference, while others form portions of books in preparation. Some of the contributions were specifically prepared for this volume.