Doolally Sahib And The Black Zamindar

Author: M J Akbar

ISBN: 978-9356401921

Price: Rs. 650.00 • ✓ 100% Genuine Publisher Edition

Book Overview

In July 1765 Robert Clive, in a letter to Sir Francis Sykes, compared Gomorrah favourably to Calcutta, then capital of British India. He wrote: ¹…œI will pronounce Calcutta to be one of the most wicked places in the Universe. Drawing upon the letters, memoirs and journals of traders, travellers, bureaucrats, officials, officers and the occasional bishop, Doolally Sahib and the Black Zamindar is a chronicle of racial relations between Indians and their last foreign invaders, sometimes infuriating but always compelling. A multitude of vignettes, combined with insight and analysis, reveal the deeply ingrained conviction of ¹…œwhite superiority that shaped this history. How deep this conviction was is best illustrated by the fact that the British abandoned a large community of their own children because they were born of Indian mothers. The British took pride in being outsiders, even as their exploitative revenue policy turned periodic drought and famine into horrific catastrophes, killing impoverished Indians in millions. There were also marvellous and heart-warming exceptions in this extraordinary panorama, people who transcended racial prejudice and served as a reminder of what might have been had the British made India a second home and merged with its culture instead of treating it as a fortunehunters turf. The power was indisputablethe British had lost just one out of 18 wars between 1757 and 1857. Defeated repeatedly on the battlefield, Indians found innovative and amusing ways of giving expression to resentment in household skirmishes, social mores and economic subversion. When Indians tried to imitate the sahibs, they turned into caricatures; when they absorbed the best that the British brought with them, the confluence was positive and productive. But for the most part, subject and ruler lived parallel lives. From the celebrated writer of the bestselling Gandhis Hinduism, the Struggle Against Jinnahs Islam comes this extensively researched and utterly engrossing book, which is easy to pick up and difficult to put down

Browse this title within our Social Sciences and Education collection. Edition details: Images in this review, English, 384 pages. Reference ISBN: 978-9356401921.

About the Author

M.J. Akbar is a distinguished author whose many books have focused on the fractured history of the Indian subcontinent, with emphasis on social schisms and religious tensions fomented by colonial policy. His first book India: The Siege Within Challenges to a Nation's Unity broke fresh ground in the analysis of forces that were disrupting the emergence of a modern nation state. His internationally acclaimed books include Nehru: The Making of India; Kashmir: Behind the Vale; The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity; Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan; and Blood Brothers, a novel; Gandhi's Hinduism: The Struggle Against Jinnah's Islam; Doolally Sahib and the Black Zemindar; and Gandhi: A Life in Three Campaigns. In addition there have been four collections of his columns, reportage and essays. He has had a parallel writing career as editor and reporter. After a spell in The Illustrated Weekly of India [then edited by the remarkable Khushwant Singh] he launched, in 1976, as editor, India's first mass-market weekly political news magazine, Sunday for the Ananda Bazar Group of Publications. In 1982 he brought out The Telegraph which broke the mould of daily newspapers and engineered radical change in print media. He has also been editorial director of India Today and The Sunday Guardian.

Why Readers Pick This Edition

• You’ll be drawn into a brutally honest portrait of British India that goes far beyond dates and events. Through vivid letters, journals, and personal accounts, this book exposes the everyday racism, moral hypocrisy, and human cost of empire. It reads like a series of gripping vignettes, yet leaves you with a powerful, unsettling understanding of how ideas of superiority shaped lives, policies, and catastrophes. If you enjoy history that challenges, provokes, and lingers in your mind, this is a deeply rewarding read.
• Published by Bloomsbury Publishing.
• Language: English.
• Page count: 384.

Catalog Description

In July 1765 Robert Clive, in a letter to Sir Francis Sykes, compared Gomorrah favourably to Calcutta, then capital of British India. He wrote: ¹…œI will pronounce Calcutta to be one of the most wicked places in the Universe. Drawing upon the letters, memoirs and journals of traders, travellers, bureaucrats, officials, officers and the occasional bishop, Doolally Sahib and the Black Zamindar is a chronicle of racial relations between Indians and their last foreign invaders, sometimes infuriating but always compelling. A multitude of vignettes, combined with insight and analysis, reveal the deeply ingrained conviction of ¹…œwhite superiority that shaped this history. How deep this conviction...

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• History

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