India, Empire, and First World War Culture: Writings, Images, and Songs

by Santanu Das

Based on ten years of research, Santanu Das's India, Empire, and First World War Writings, Images, and Songs recovers the sensuous experience of combatants, non-combatants and civilians from undivided India in the 1914–1918 conflict and their socio-cultural, visual, and literary worlds. Around 1.5 million Indians were recruited, of whom over a million served abroad. Das draws on a variety of fresh, unusual sources - objects, images, rumours, streetpamphlets, letters, diaries, sound-recordings, folksongs, testimonies, poetry, essays, and fiction - to produce the first cultural and literary history, moving from recruitment tactics in villages through sepoy traces and feelings in battlefields, hospitals, and POW camps to post-war reflections on Europe and empire. Combining archival excavation in different countries across several continents with investigative readings of Gandhi, Kipling, Iqbal, Naidu, Nazrul, Tagore, and Anand, this imaginative study opens up the worlds of sepoys and labourers, men and women, nationalists, artists, and intellectuals, trying to make sense of home and the world in times of war.

Genres: History, India

484 pages, Paperback

Published September 13, 2018

Reviews

[Tanvi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked this book up because I was very curious to understand why a colonial nation would be so eager to serve in their oppressor's army. This was especially so after reading Gandhi's enthusiasm and support in the Indian recruitment. This book did a great job on chronicling the reasons, the scenes from the war and the current concept of commemoration in India and abroad. Great writing and crucial topic!