A Concise History of India [Paperback]

"With an informative,scholarly text enhanced with illustrations and quotations....[this book] is recommended for academic reading lists and reference collections as well as the non-specialist general reader with an interest in understanding India's contemporary political and economic relationships with the community of nations..." Library Bookwatch

"Lucid comprehensive and up-to-date, this book will surely establish itself as essential reading for all undergraduate and graduate courses on South Asian history..." C.A. Bayly, Vere Harmsworth Professor of Imperial and Naval History, University of Cambridge

In a challenging new history of modern India, the authors explore the imaginative and institutional structures that have changed and sustained the country. While previous histories have been composed as handmaids of British nationalism or as products of emerging nationalist identities, this book challenges the notion that a continuous meaning can be applied to social categories such as "caste," "Hindu," "Muslim," or even "India,". An initial chapter focuses on the period of Muslim dynasties that preceded colonial conquest, while the final chapter analyzes the dramatic recent events of the 1990s, including economic change, religious nationalism and India's emergence as a nuclear power. Illustrations and quotations from historical sources are integral to the narrative. Thomas R. Metcalf is Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley. His previous books inlcude An Imperial Vision (California, 1989) and Ideologies of the Raj (Cambridge, 1997). Barbara Metcalf is Professor of History at the University of California, Davis. She is the editor of Making Muslim Space in North America (University of California Press, 1996).

Two distinguished historians, Barbara Metcalf and Thomas Metcalf, come together to write a new and accessible account of modern India. The narrative, which charts the history of India from the Mughals, through the colonial encounter and independence, to the present day, challenges imperialist notions of an unchanging and monolithic India bounded by tradition and religious hierarchies. Instead the book reveals a complex society which is constantly transforming and reinventing itself in response to political and social challenges. The book is beautifully composed and richly illustrated. It will be essential reading for anyone who wants to understand India, her turbulent past and her present uncertainties.

Barbara D. Metcalf is Professor in the Department of History, University of California, Davis. Her publications include Islamic Revival in British India (1982) and, more recently, Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (1996). Thomas R. Metcalf is Professor of History and Sarah Kailath Professor of India Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His publications include Ideologies of the Raj (1994, 1997), and An Imperial Vision: Indian Architecture and Britain's Raj (1989).