[lbo-talk] two reasons to celebrate 4 July

[// ravi]

On Jul 3, 2011, at 5:49 PM, James Heartfield wrote:
> Ravi asks about sources for the INA and independence.
> 
> I found Sucheta Mahajan’s Independence and Partition, sage 2000 particularly good on this. The recently published Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: The British Empire and the Ravaging of India During World War II, New York, Basic Books, 2010 is fantastic. And well worth a look at is Joyce Lebra, The Indian National Army and Japan, Singapore, 2008 which gives a pro-INA account. Ahmed Akbar’s biography of Nehru is good on the Congress campaign.

I appreciate the links and I will follow-up on them if I can find these books in libraries in the USA, or during my visit to India later this year. I confess I am highly suspicious of revisionist accounts of the nature and movements of Indian independence (especially when they serve a particular narrative, such as the recently popular turn to violent alternatives, starting with the sepiah mutiny), but perhaps these books will convince me otherwise.

For the record, my own notion of what led to the departure of the British is what is the standard one (particularly within India), to wit: the systematic growth of nationwide non-violent protest including civil disobedience, and the decay of the British empire sealed by WW2.

	—ravi