Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal provide an excellent study of South Asian history in

Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy. The book, now in its third
edition, is a concise overview of modern South Asian history, focusing on changes in
society, economics, and politics from 1700 to the present in India, Pakistan, and
Bagladesh. For Bose and Jalal, the goal of the work is to implement the newest
research on and historiographical interpretations of the formation of religious, regional,
and national histories in South Asia. The themes of regional and religious identities
coupled with the intricate relationship between religion and politics are discussed
throughout the book, and reveal how the shifting parameters of South Asian
historiography coincided with the changes of decolonization. The major focus of the
work addresses colonialism and the post-colonial period, positing colonialism as an
agent of historical change placed in a social context and studied in its interaction with
culture and the politics of resistance.

The book is organized chronologically into twenty chapters, ranging from a brief
discussion of the pre-modern period to events of the twenty-first century. Beginning with
an introduction to South Asian history, the authors immediately explain one of the key
theoretical frameworks of the book. Bose and Jalal rely heavily upon the ideas of
Edward Saids Orientalist theory, showing how much of the historiography surrounding
South Asia is muddled by less than accurate information. For the authors, the inability of
the West to understand the East is a key element in the derivation of contradictory
images of the Indian subcontinent, many of which this book attempts to dispel. The dual
dialectics of centralism-regionalism and of nationalism-communitarianism are very
important here as well. Shifting definitions and relations between the center, region,
nation, and community are integral to the diversity of South Asia, and the relationship of
constituent parts to the whole in the subcontinent is the subject of an ongoing historical
discourse (6-7).

Following the introduction, the book explores the socio-cultural foundations of ancient
India as rooted in religious practices and major political changes. While it is emphasized
that historians, orientalists, and traditionalists alike have attempted to provide many
versions of Indias past, there is much new research available to suggest that the
country was highly diverse and was willing to accommodate a plethora of cultures.
According to the authors, Indian society, economy and politics from ancient times until
the twelfth century had dynamism, which is not in accordance with the stereotypical
image of Indias changeless tradition. (16) Politically, phases of imperial consolidation
were followed by decentralization, while economically and socially there was mobility,
commercial exchange, and the caste system. Indias ability to adapt to change and
absorb a plethora of internal and external groups made it one of the most unique
countries in the world.

The authors attempt to summarize hundreds of years of pre-modern history from the
seventh century to the sixteenth century succeeds less as a cohesive narrative and
more as a poignant argument regarding the overall complex role of Islam in India during
this period. Despite the ignorant Western view of Islam as an intolerant and militant
religion, Muslim rule often allowed for tolerance and assimilation, as evidenced in South
Asia (18). Regional specificities of economy and culture as well as the variety in
Muslims debunk the myth of a monolithic Islamic community in India and question any
singular model of Muslim conversions (19). For example, the establishment of the Delhi
Sultanate from 12061526 led to four dynasties: the Mamluks, Khaljis, Tughlaqs, and
Lodis. The Delhi sultans upheld the supremacy of sharia in their state structure, but did
not impose it on non-Muslim subjects (23).

The Mughal Empire receives a number of reinterpretations by the authors. Bose and
Jalal argue that the two recurring themes in premodern history are the infusion of new
people and ideas and temporary cycles of imperial consolidation and decentralization.
Invasion, such as the establishment of the Mughal dynasty, was not a sharp disjuncture
but rather a fresh process of accommodation, assimilation, and cultural fusion (28). The
authors suggest that the Western interpretation of the Mughal Empire as a despotic
authoritarian state is false; instead, the Mughals ruled in a complex and loose form of
hegemony over a diverse, differentiated, and dynamic economy and society. In addition
to debunking these views, the authors also cite new research to show that the Mughals
were not oppressive towards the peasantry. Rather, the Mughals entered into
accommodations with their subjects. Furthermore, even during the age of European
expansion, Mughal sovereignty was not undermined until the British tried the last of the
emperors, Bahadur Shah Zafar, after the 1857 rebellion.

Westerners viewed the eighteenth century decline of the Mughals as a period of

anarchy until the period of British hegemony. India was rife with revolts based on
regional aspects during the eighteenth century, and this, coupled with tribal incursions
and outside threats, led to the erosion of the Mughal state. Following the British victory
at Plassey in 1757 and the 1764 victory at Buxar, the British began imperial control over
parts of India. The British conquest began in the 1750s, and the final conquest occurred
by the 1850s. Bose and Jalal note that the interpretation of the transition to colonialism
in India must address the impetus for European expansion, the reasons for colonial
conquest, the basis for EIC-Indian collaboration, and the reasons for British success.

The EIC profited from Indian textiles, the right to collect taxes from Indian territories, and
the opening up of new markets. Therefore, the British resorted to conquistador
imperialism, which contributed to economic stagnation during the nineteenth century.
(53) The period 1757 to 1810 saw the straightforward plunder of Indian revenues, in
which huge revenues were garnered from Indian manufactured products and textiles.
Following the capitalist imperialist paradigm, the British began flooding the Indian
markets with cotton by the 1850s, crippling the native textile industry. China tea soon
replaced textiles as the most profitable good, and the EIC financed itself through the
cultivation of indigo and opium.

The amoral political behavior of the British combined pre-colonial state ideology with
English law, and retaining Indian puppet rulers to minimize the threat of social reaction.
For the British, the maintenance of cultural legitimacy through the symbols and
meanings of the indigenous society was as important as physical rule. Orientalist
scholars helped design policies based upon pseudo socio-cultural interpretations of the
subcontinent. Yet cultural bribery had its limitations, especially since the British sought
to sedentarize and peasantize Indian society by reinforcing the caste hierarchy and the
enforcement of strict legal codes. Colonial role in the nineteenth century was social
engineering at its worst, with Indian traditions reinforced in rural areas, while in urban
centers there was a push towards Westernization (67). The promotion of western
education and the English language did benefit some through upward mobility, but for
most, the problems created by colonial oppression only led towards widespread
resistance affecting all regions and social groups.

Bose and Jalal superbly detail the tumultuous events of the 1857 Sepoy Rebellion.
Despite the mixed historiographical views on the mutiny as being a freedom movement,
restorationist struggle, feudal reaction, or peasant rebellion, the authors of the text posit
that the revolt was tied to aristocratic, religious, agrarian, and patriotic aspects. While
the breakdown of the EIC army was caused in part by the Lee Enfield debacle, other
revolts in Awadh and central India were popular movements. Many of the farmers who
took up arms were discontented by the loss of landed rights to urban traders and
moneylenders, and also were fed up with high British taxes and racial arrogance. The
mutiny was ultimately a failure which ended in mass executions, the destruction of
villages, and millions of pounds in debt. Yet it showed the British that Indian patriotism
and discontent were forces to be reckoned with and resulted in the end of company
management of the colony.

The period following the Sepoy Mutiny is described in the book as the High Noon of
Colonialism, 18581914, during which time the British reformed their administrative
methods and continued to reap even greater economic advantages from the colony.
The installment of a viceroy and secretary of state to lead the administration of the
colony allowed for greater central control, while the Indian army was altered based on a
1:2 ratio. British Indian forces were utilized to help protect the Empires interests
globally, yet the sacrifices of 60,000 brave Indian troops in the First World War were in
vain, because the colonial forces did not benefit from Britains European conflict. (82).
Instead, the authors argue that India was literally drained of its wealth during the latter
nineteenth and early twentieth century, leading to devaluation in currency, loss of
resources, and ultimately the loss of life in famine and warfare.

In light of these dismal circumstances, it is clear why the most important theme of the
late nineteenth century is nationalism. Bose and Jalal explain that new research shows
that anti-colonialism was not simply the result of isolated educated urban groups
imbued with Western ideas, but rather nationalism derived from many sources, primarily
related to regional affinities and religious sensibilities (89). For many people, the desire
for upward mobility was part of the changes of this important period, and the effects of
social reform and religious revival further altered the situation. Intellectuals in India
sought alternatives to the oppressiveness of the colonial situation, and Muslims in the
north, led by figures such as Sayyid Ahmed Khan, attempted reform movements to
push for both modernity and anti-colonialism. Anti-colonial resistance took on many
forms, including civilian insurrection, rural revolts, tenant protests, and riots, revealing
that subaltern anti-colonialism predates the attempts by urban elites to launch mass
mobilization against the British. While the formation of the Indian National Congress in
1885 represents the first attempt at establishing a leadership body for the people of
India, most of the country was quiescent until the First World War.

The book emphasizes the effects of the First World War as the catalyst of political and
social change in India. Important here is the theme of the impact of war on the structure
of the colonial state and economic relations between the metropolis and colony. Bose
and Jalal note that the 1920s mass movements were directly the result of the economic
and political crises of the decade. For example, the British used 1.2 million Indian men
in the armed forces, causing strains on the food supply, which led to famines (104). In
addition, the British enforced high income taxes and customs duties causing high
inflation and poverty among the rural population. As noted by the authors, the path
towards decolonization was not paved with good intentions, since the British merely
attempted to shift attention away from the center by focusing on mere provincial reforms
in the 1920s and 1930s (107). While the 1935 Act did widen the franchise to 35 million
people and give provinces more autonomy, Indians still had no say on defense issues,
and the viceroy had many powers under his direct control.

Bose and Jalal tie the rise of Gandhian nationalism and mass politics intricately to the
events of the Depression and the Second World War. The Great Depression changed
the metropolis-colony relationship yet again, including a decline in imported British
goods and materials, wiping out Indias export surplus, and the devaluation of currency.
While India was still vital to the Empire, economically the situation changed in the 1930s
and 1940s, but with the rise of tensions with the Nazis the British continued to want to
retain to their foreign holdings and shelve reforms. In this context, the rise of Gandhi,
who first staged non-violent agitations as early as 191718, appears all the more
plausible given the broad range of events surrounding his rise to prominence. Gandhis
appeal to nationalists in India through the medium of the Congress and countrywide
protests made him an influential player in the 1920s, but for many students and workers
the efforts of more radical organizations seemed the more effective means to overthrow
colonial rule.

The Second World War put further strains on the Indian economy and contributed
directly to the fall of British colonial power. While the British were willing to spend 3.5
billion rupees on defense and financed the war by overworking the mints in India, they
were unwilling to aid the Bengalese, who suffered from a terrible famine in 19434,
costing the lives of over three million people (132). Thus, as the British began suffering
major defeats in Southeast Asia at the hands of the Japanese, Gandhian nationalists
pressed their demands through the Quit India movement. By late 1945-1946 the final
mass movements broke down the last vestiges of British administration and resulted in
the mutiny of the Royal Indian Navy. Therefore, the authors show how the War broke
down the last vestiges of imperial control, and led to the 1946 British cabinet mission to
discuss the terms of Indian independence.

While British colonial rule died an ignominious death in 1947, its legacy was firmly
implanted with the partition of Indian and the creation of Pakistan. Bose and Jalal
believe that the contradictions and structural peculiarities of Indian society and politics
led to the creation of Pakistan, yet a fierce historical debate exists as to whether it was
due to a religious divide, or British imperialist policies of divide and rule. Returning to
Edward Said, the authors question whether Indian social tradition and even Muslim
identity were byproducts of the British colonial imagination. While it is certain that both
were influenced by colonialism, they definitely were not entirely formed by it. Muslim
identity faced fractures in the nineteenth century and continuous regional divides, yet
the power of the All India Muslim League and the views of Punjabis and Bengalese
fostered enough Muslim support to contribute to Pakistani sovereignty. While the
partition created a terrible wound far deeper than the promises of independence, the
end of British rule allowed for both states to attempt to move forward. For Pakistan, it
meant creating from scratch a nation of sixty five million Muslims, and the conditions
under which the nation was formed caused the government to be prone to military rule.

India and Pakistan have continuously struggled with centralism and regionalism in the
balance of power to create modern states. Center-region tensions are due to the
circumstances of the post-colonial period during which both nations were forced to set
up strong states, leading to a strong federal authority in India and a strong military state
infused with Islamic ideology in Pakistan. The successful rules of Jawaharlal Nehru and
Indira Gandhi as prime ministers from the 1940s to the 1970s allowed for a period of
political stability in India. Yet, as noted by the authors, the 1984 assassination of Indira
Gandhi by Sikh separatists damaged the stability of the country, leading to shakeups in
numerous elections and the rise of Hindu majoritarian politics. In Pakistan, the military
has kept much control over the country despite challenges by parliamentary figures,
with military officers such as General Zia-ul-Haq and General Pervez Musharraf ruling
as virtual dictators.

Bose and Jalal conclude that India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh each continue to face
common sets of political, social, and economic problems. While illiteracy and life
expectancy are huge issues in all these states, the problem of high defense expenses
and inter-state hostilities continues to hamper the potential growth of these countries
into major powers in the South Asian market. The authors hope that instead of
threatening nuclear war against each other, India and Pakistan may be able to bridge
their political differences through shared socio-cultural similarities. A better
understanding of their common history makes it clear that each has much to learn from
the other, though the legacies of the past are also riddled with many complex issues
which are continuously debated to this day.
Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy is a superb analysis of South
Asian historiography and the history of the past several centuries. In addition to the
twenty detailed chapters covering the topic in question, the authors provide a useful
glossary of terms, a chronological outline of major historical events, and a select
bibliography with notes. The bibliography and notes are a treasure trove of materials for
teachers and students alike, detailing some of the best works in the field of South Asian
studies. Bose and Jalal give the reader a brief historiographical essay prior to the
bibliography, citing the works of Ranajit Guha, C.A. Bayly, and other scholars in the field
of Subaltern Studies to shape the intellectual framework of the text. As noted previously,
the work is heavily influenced by the writings of Edward Said, whose critique of
Orientalism paved the way for outstanding historical works on Asian history such as this
one.

Edited by Karen Rosenflanz :

RETRIEVED FROM
http://www2.css.edu/app/depts/his/historyjournal/index.cfm?cat=7&art=146

(c) 2013 The Middle Ground Journal, Number 6, Spring, 2013. See Submission
Guidelines page for the journal's not-for-profit educational open-access policy.

In the last twenty years or so there have been great transformations in the
historiography of modern South Asia. It would not be too crude an exaggeration to say
that no western historian of much intellectual ambition engaged with the subject from
James Mill in the early nineteenth century until after the second world war, while Indian
historians were little known outside the subcontinent. All that has changed. Highly
innovative work that commands the attention of all historians, not merely of regional
specialists, is now done on modern South Asia. This work comes out of Indian and
western universities, where scholars from South Asia, like Sugata Bose and Ayesha
Jalal, play a very prominent role.

Works of synthesis on modern South Asia have not kept up with the flow of
monographs, the installments of Subaltern Studies or the articles that appear in
profusion in The Indian Journal of Economic and Social History or in Modern Asian
Studies. The late Percy Spear and Stanley Wolpert, the two authors who have
commanded the field in Britain for so long in introducing general readers or
undergraduates to South Asian history, now look distinctly dated. A new and
authoritative synthesis like this one is therefore very welcome.
Modern South Asia introduces the reader not merely to new interpretations of topics
such as the rise of British power, nationalism and partition, but to new perspectives on
the subject as a whole. The traditional historiography of British India tended to be very
much history from above. British Governor Generals were placed in the centre of the
stage and judged as good, bad or indifferent by whatever criteria were currently deemed
appropriate. In later and more liberal treatments, such as those of Spear and Wolpert,
prominent Indians who engaged with the Raj, Rammohan Roy, the early nationalists
and the great protagonists in the end of empire - Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah, were also
given full treatment. Popular accounts published in this country remain obsessed with
personalities, above all with Mountbatten, Wavell and the leadership of Congress and
the League. 'Ordinary' Indians were reduced to abstract Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs or
in books with any pretensions to scholarship to statistics in the perennial debates as to
whether India got richer or poorer under the British.

Bose and Jalal try to write history from below. They are of course interested in Gandhi,
Nehru and Jinnah and have important things to say about them, which lay readers may
well find surprising and challenging. The British, however, are not personalised. Wavell
does not appear in the index and the only reference to Warren Hastings tells the reader
that he was impeached. There is no room for cultural brokers like William Carey.
Instead, the British presence in India is depicted as a colonial state, taking forms that
varied with its underlying economic rationale. In the early nineteenth century that
rationale shifted from oceanic trade to the extraction of land revenue; in the later
nineteenth century priorities changed to the generation of an export surplus and the
stimulation of rural purchasing power for British imports. Something is of course lost in
such a synoptic view. The Raj may well seem to be a much more unified, calculating
and rational institution than was actually the case, and the diversity of the British
presence is inevitably telescoped. Nevertheless Bose and Jalal could well reply that
there are enough books of The Men who Ruled India genre for those who wish to
recapture that diversity and they have other purposes to fulfil.

They wish attention to be paid not to the British, except as a source of some of the
pressures that shaped Indian society, or to the Indian elite, but to what they term
'intermediate social groups', such as merchants and traders and those who filled minor
offices, and the 'subaltern groups', peasants, the urban poor and the 'tribals', at the
bottom of society. They are concerned with women as well as with men. They recognise
the crucial importance of labels such as Hindu or Muslim in the twentieth century, but
insist that these are not immutable distinctions that have endured for centuries; they
have a relatively recent history. 'The undue and ahistorical privileging of religion in the
periodization of Indian history' must be discarded. 'There are no grounds for branding
the ancient, medieval and modern periods of the subcontinent's long and complex
history as Hindu, Muslim and British' (p. 13). Bose and Jalal urge historians to concern
themselves with smaller entities, those that they call 'communitarian' rather than with
the 'communal' labels attached to supposedly monolithic religions. As with all the other
concepts that the authors use, the uninitiated probably require much more explanation
of community' than is offered to them, but the issue is summarised on p. 108: 'What
needs emphasizing is that there were multiple and competing narratives informed by
religious and linguistic cultural identities seeking to contribute to the emerging discourse
on the Indian nation.' These voices were eventually drowned by the assertion of religion
in the making of Pakistan and by the counter-assertion, at least for a time, of secular
nationalism's right to inherit the centralised state created by the British and to call it
'India'. It has been the ultimate fate of the communities, except in Bangladesh, to be
subordinated to one or other of these leviathans.

There is a strong ideological commitment behind this interpretation of South Asia's

history, as there is behind any historical interpretation of any interest. Its assumptions
are very different from those embodied in recent western attempts at synthesis, such as
those of Spear or Wolpert. Both of them seem to have believed in an essential
Indianness and to have understood its history as a series of interchanges between that
essence and outside influences, most obviously Muslim and British ones. This for Spear
was 'the inner meaning of modern Indian history, culminating in Gandhi and the national
movement, independence and the reign of Nehru'. In brief sections at the end of their
books he and Wolpert assessed the state of contemporary India, noting the extent of
western influence and the survival of 'traditions'. For Wolpert, 'The more India changes,
the more Indian it remains'. Significantly, neither of them wrote anything about post-
1947 Pakistan, let alone Bangladesh. For them, partition was a disaster and the
criterion for judging the success of independence was the survival of India as a unitary,
secular state.

Neither intellectual trends nor recent events have been kind to such interpretations.
Concepts of an essential, timeless India have been subjected to withering analysis.
They are emphatically rejected as western constructions, designed to emphasise India's
difference and therefore its inferiority. Indian nationalism as it emerged at the end of the
nineteenth century is not generally seen as any kind of fulfilment of India's history, but
rather as a colonial legacy. A narrow elite were able to use western concepts of nation
and state as the means to obtain power over the rest of the population and to
perpetuate the subordination of the 'subalterns'. Bose and Jalal are more sympathetic to
nationalist aspirations than it is currently fashionable to be, arguing that discriminating
nationalists were capable of recognising the claims of linguistic and regional diversity to
be embodied in the new Indian nation. Nevertheless, the heroes of the nationalist
pantheon are left badly scarred. Congress under Gandhi 'more often than not
represented the class interests of the middle to richer peasantry and industrial
capitalists in the urban sector'. For the poor, the Mahatma offered only "the palliative
remedy of trusteeship" (p. 144). Nehru is portrayed as the exponent of a unitary
nationalism that took over and operated the colonial centralised state. His claims to
have founded a democratic new India are called into question. Of the great leaders, only
Jinnah, so often reviled in conventional historiography, emerges largely unscathed. It is
argued that a separate Pakistan based on religion was not at all what he intended. He
had a vision of a pluralistic India in which a Muslim 'nation' would co-exist with other
nations and be able to exercise 'an equitable share of power' in the centre (p. 193).

What many recent historians have seen as a flawed nationalism inevitably, in their eyes,
produced flawed states after independence. Bose and Jalal do not endorse the respect,
if often tempered with anxiety for the future, accorded in most western accounts to
Indian 'democracy', let alone to the workings of the states of Pakistan or Bangladesh.
They dislike the centralisation of power which, they believe, Nehru perpetuated from the
past. Expectations that a strong state might be an effective agent for driving through
'modernity" are now often looked at with as much scepticism as is accorded to the
concept of 'modernity' itself, taken to be another western construct. On the role of the
Indian state as a promoter of economic or social development, Bose and Jalal are a
little ambiguous. They recognise that the economic liberalisation of the early 1990s
removed 'the more stifling bureaucratic controls on industry', but insist that 'state and
public action' have an important role in remedying deficiencies in health and education
(p. 229). The political failures of India seem glaring to them. The narrow basis of the
Nehru regime could not be sustained. As subsequent leaders, notably Indira Gandhi,
endeavoured to become more populist they were forced to invoke Hindu
'majoritarianism' as a counter to regional challenges. The legacies of military rule in
Pakistan have been 'a parallel arms and drugs economy, administrative paralysis, and
violent social conflict' (p. 230).

In the last chapter of the book, reflections on fifty years of independence, Bose and
Jalal offer their alternative scenario for the evolution of modern South Asia. Instead of a
transfer of 'colonial structures of state and ideologies of sovereignty' to 'mainstream
nationalist elites' (pp. 23940), they would have preferred the survival of pre-colonial
ideals and practices, whether under the Mughals or their eighteenth-century
successors, of 'flexible, nuanced, and overarching suzerainties', which observed both
individual and communitarian rights' and had no 'notion of absolute sovereignty' or
'singular allegiance' (p. 240). There must be a return to 'a political and state system
based on layered and shared sovereignties' (p. 243).

Assuming that the pre-colonial order had some of the characteristics attributed to it by
Bose and Jalal, how did the shift come about some hundred and fifty years later to two
and subsequently to three sovereign successor states, one overtly based on religion
and the others to a considerable degree dominated by parties organised according to
religious allegiance? The attempt to answer this question is the book's major theme.

Bose and Jalal attribute much to the nature of colonial rule. They rightly point out that
the British had a strong concept of a sovereign state from the eighteenth century
onwards and that nationalists were more inclined to try to capture this powerful state for
themselves than to dismantle it. Bose and Jalal are, however, also critical of what might
seem to be opposite trends in colonial rule, a willingness to devolve authority to regions
within a nominally federal structure and to assure separate rights to what the British
identified as minorities. The situation created by the 1935 Government of India Act with
its carefully rigged provisions that no Indian group should be able to exercise absolute
power at the centre and with its provinces based on historical evolution rather than on
religion does not look all that different from Bose's and Jalal's ideal, except of course for
the survival of a sovereign imperial presence.

The British are also held responsible, in part at least, for the consolidation of more or
less unified Hindu or Muslim religious entities. British views that India was so divided go
back to the early days of their rule and the British had something to do with the process
of defining the orthodoxies to which Hindus and Muslims increasingly adhered. In the
south, the East India Company 'sponsored a somewhat spurious neo-Brahmanical
ruling ideology' based on a rigid definition of caste, while British scholars 'gave far
greater importance to doctrinal Islam or the sharia as propagated by the ulema' than to
the 'eclectic religion shot through with local customary practices which was followed by
the vast majority of Indian Muslims' (p. 74). The late nineteenth-century censuses
embodied British notions of clear-cut religious divisions and electoral constituencies
were eventually demarcated on religious lines. Yet Bose and Jalal stop well short of
divide and rule as a full explanation for the hardening of the Hindu/Muslim divide, let
alone for partition in 1947. They see the emergence of a variety of Muslim identities,
'linked to the fact of British colonial rule without being wholly shaped by it' (p.167). The
creation of a Pakistan consisting of no more than parts of the Muslim majority provinces
of the old British India was the outcome of a whole series of contingent events, carefully
analysed in this book. The partition of the areas where Muslims lived between Pakistan
and India, far from being the fulfilment of the idea an Islamic nation, was 'its most
decisive political abortion' (p. 188).

This review has tried to indicate something of the richness of this book and of the
intellectual excitement that it generates. Will it succeed in displacing other introductory
accounts to provide 'the multi-dimensional, high definition overview of modern South
Asian history' (p. 5) which the authors, with justification, find lacking elsewhere? There
can be not the slightest doubt that it addresses the issues which currently dominate a
highly creative body of historical writing, that this writing has been comprehensively
mastered and that persuasive interpretations of it are offered. The book is a manifesto
as well as an historical account, but readers will have no difficulty in identifying the
authors' ideological agenda and in making up their own minds about it. Total success
seems, however, to require a little more than these admirable attributes. It requires a
high quality of exposition if an audience without prior knowledge is to be caught and
held. That quality is lacking.

Whatever their level of intellectual aspiration, Spear's books were, as the authors
generously acknowledge, 'elegantly written'. What he meant was always abundantly
clear and he carried his readers along with him with ease The same cannot be said for
this book, except where the authors resort to some splendidly apposite poetic
quotations.

The introductory chapter embodies what the uninitiated will surely find to be a major
defect in the book. The later pages of that chapter become hopelessly over-allusive.
The authors clearly wish to establish their position in relation to their peers, but that is
surely not the purpose of a book such as this. Instead, they are likely to baffle, and one
fears to irritate and put off, the serious inquirer who might like to know what 'subalternity'
is or what is the difference between 'dissonance or polyvalence' and might well
welcome 'a much-needed decentred balance in our current, disoriented scholarly
predicament' (p. 11) if she knew what any of that meant or if the authors would
condescend to tell her. The issues raised in the introduction are serious ones but it is
self-indulgent to write in that way in a book like this.
The other main problem that the lay reader is likely to face is the denseness of the
exposition in many places. The authors set out to cover a great deal in a relatively short
space and this inevitably means cutting corners rather than offering full explanations.
For instance, in a section on the emergence of successor states to the Mughal empire
the reader is told about 'a transition from prebendal to patrimonial land holdings' (pp. 52-
3), but the following sentences do not seem to explain or to illustrate what that might
mean. In short, one feels that what this book desperately needed was an aggressive
copy editor prepared to say over and over again: 'Stop, I do not know what that means;
please explain it to me.' Modern South Asia would have benefited greatly from that
salutary discipline. As it is, it is certainly a work that professionals and the initiated will
greatly admire but it is one whose wider impact may be more limited than it deserves to
be.

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