Violent Fraternity
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Shruti Kapila
About this book
A groundbreaking history of the political ideas that made modern India
Violent Fraternity is a major history of the political thought that laid the foundations of modern India. Taking readers from the dawn of the twentieth century to the independence of India and formation of Pakistan in 1947, the book is a testament to the power of ideas to drive historical transformation.
Shruti Kapila sheds new light on leading figures such as M. K. Gandhi, Muhammad Iqbal, B. R. Ambedkar, and Vinayak Savarkar, the founder of Hindutva, showing how they were innovative political thinkers as well as influential political actors. She also examines lesser-known figures who contributed to the making of a new canon of political thought, such as B. G. Tilak, considered by Lenin to be the "fountainhead of revolution in Asia," and Sardar Patel, India's first deputy prime minister. Kapila argues that it was in India that modern political languages were remade through a revolution that defied fidelity to any exclusive ideology. The book shows how the foundational questions of politics were addressed in the shadow of imperialism to create both a sovereign India and the world's first avowedly Muslim nation, Pakistan. Fraternity was lost only to be found again in violence as the Indian age signaled the emergence of intimate enmity.
A compelling work of scholarship, Violent Fraternity demonstrates why India, with its breathtaking scale and diversity, redefined the nature of political violence for the modern global era.
Author / Editor information
Reviews
[An] ambitious reconstruction of the thinking that drove India’s political elite in the half century before independence in 1947.
" --- "[Violent Fraternity] embodies the fresh and bold scholarship that is redrawing the intellectual map of the world."---Pankaj Mishra, New York Times Book Review --- "An innovative and original study of Indian political thought — showing that the threat of violence between Hindus and Muslims has long shaped Indian political thinking, even before independence and partition."---Gideon Rachman, Financial Times Topics
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Frontmatter
i -
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Contents
vii -
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Introduction
1 -
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1 Political Theology of Sedition
14 -
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2 Ghadar! violence and the political potential of the planet
53 -
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3 Hindutva’s War and the Battlefield of India
89 -
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4 Gandhi and the Truth of Violence
130 -
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5 The Triumph of Fraternity: Sovereign Violence and Pakistan as Peace
163 -
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6 The Philosophical Discovery of Muslim Sovereignty
194 -
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7 A People’s War: 1947, Civil War and the Rise of Republican Sovereignty
229 -
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Epilogue
272 -
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Acknowledgements
283 -
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Bibliography
287 -
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Index
305
