Britain and Indian Nationalism: The Imprint of Ambiguity, 1929-1942

Britain and Indian Nationalism: The Imprint of Ambiguity, 1929-1942

D.A. Low

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997

ISBN 0-521-55017-3

With so much that has been written on Indian nationalism one can hardly imagine anything new to evolve out of a historiographical account of the most important period with regard to the decline of British imperial hold on its colonial territories. D. A. Low's book proves the opposite. It does so by relating events and course of the pre-independence political history of the sub-continent to one overarching problematique: British ambiguity towards the aspiring demands of a nascent Indian nation. By making the thin red line between accommodation and repression-as the British colonial attitude par excellence-the point of departure for a thorough analysis of the Anglo-Indian encounter between the critical years of 1929 and 1942, Low is able to trace back the singularity of the Indian struggle for independence to the two-track strategy of constitutional reform and firm oppression employed by the...