Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths has just come out in the US! Read the first chapter free at
@PrincetonUPress
To mark the occasion, here's a thread with some of the arguments...
Took my daughter to the library at USyd yesterday. Marvelling at the endless books, she danced through the stacks, threw open her arms and declared, "I'm in heaven". A reminder of how universities are meant to make us feel.
I resigned my professorship a few months ago. With my three-page resignation letter, I sent 3 books. Call it a resignation reading list for the LSE leadership, who could learn so much from
@amiasrinivasan
@SaraNAhmed
and
@kate_manne
1/2 More than a dozen women at the LSE have held each other up through this. As a full professor with a secure job, I can put my name to our efforts. But let me reassure you, the others are stronger than me. They've gotten jobs. They're writing books. And they are not done.
🚨Everyone stop right now and read this article about LSE's appalling response to abusive prof. This has been YEARS in the making:
'Women silenced across ranks: LSE’s mishandled sexual misconduct investigation into professor'
Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths is published in South Asia today!
In spite of the sombre cover, researching this book was a great pleasure. Although the themes are serious, there were many moments of levity that made me chuckle. Here's a lighter fact for each myth:
My piece in The Hindustan Times laying out new thinking on secularism, socialism and nonalignment in the Nehru years. Available without subscription.
@PrincetonUPress
@lsehistory
Two recent positive reviews of Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths. It's wonderful (and a wonderful relief!) when a Distinguished Professor such as Sumit Ganguly has kind words for one's book.
What did I do? I listened to the women. I believed the women. I supported the women in their calls for justice. And I asked the senior-most people at LSE to do the same. Nothing out of the ordinary, and yet the hardest thing I've done.
If you're a woman thinking of applying for the Assistant Professor in Modern South Asian History job recently advertised, these will be essential reading.
Just spent three amazing days at the
@Archives_NCBS
in Bangalore, which is shaping up to be one of India's premier archives for the history of science, agriculture, ecology and conservation.
This beautiful blue jay is from the Carl D'Souza collection. 1/n
I've agreed (foolishly, no doubt!) to write a chapter on the history of economic development in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Nepal, c.1930s to the present.
There's heaps of great research out there, but what do you read for broad brush ideas or histories about Development?
Historians of independent India: don't let anyone convince you to move to the colonial period because there are more records before 1947! Take note of these non-official archival collections. Thanks for alerting us to these sources
@vandana_menon
Lovely to receive a copy of
@afsartelugu
's fabulous new book!This work is a model for how to use non-official sources to produce new interpretations of key events like the Police Action in Hyderabad. A must read, even among this year's bumper crop of histories of the Nehru years.
Thank you to Dr Apoorvanand (
@Apoorvanand__
) and the audience at Jawahar Bhawan for the engaging conversation this evening, reflecting on Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths.
Book talk on 'Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths'
Speaker:
@TaylorCSherman
, Professor of Modern South Asian History
@LSEnews
Friday, 17 February 2023, 5:00 PM IST at the CPR office conference room.
Register here:
Twitter friends, I've been lucky enough to see an advanced copy of this poignant literary and social history of Hyderabad after the Police Action - it is a beautiful and important book.
Very happy to share that I just finished the first round of proofreading for my forthcoming book on Hyderabad “Remaking History “from the Cambridge University Press!!!
Thank you,
@apar1984
for this incisive review and for recommending Nehru's India to your viewers!
I love the mischievous suggestion that my book might be gifted as a form of punishment to those who spread knavish history via whatsapp!
Yesterday as India celebrated the birth anniversary of our first Prime Minister it also marked the high point of a disinformation project called "Blame it on Nehru". To sift, fact from fiction, I review
@TaylorCSherman
's book 'Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths'.
The use, abuse and erasure of Nehru's image, name and legacy was everywhere during the celebrations of India's independence this past week.
What can historians do with this highly politicised figure? A few options in a thread:
Secularism: In 1956, India held huge celebrations to mark the 2500th year since the birth of the Buddha. Prisoners in UP were treated to a "jail holiday" including a special meal. At Sanchi the ceremonies included relics recently returned from the Victoria & Albert Museum.
"Sherman is informative and analytical at the same time. The book deserves wide reading in India." Thank you Rishav Sharma and
@newsclickin
for this generous review of Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths
I'm finally reading this and it is brilliant! I feel like an undergrad again as I'm taking so many notes. The book is historically grounded, based on deep contemporary fieldwork, and contains far-reaching arguments. Just one of them: "there are no inevitable climate futures".
High Modernism: In 1955 India held its first National Exhibition of Art. There were 1025 entries from 335 artists competing for a top prize of Rs2,000. The judges declined to give out the top award, telling artists to make a better effort for the next competition.
I had a lovely conversation with Anubha Anushree for New Books in South Asian Studies, and we began by dispelling a myth about Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths - this is not really a book about Nehru! Thanks for the chat, Anubha.
Just discovered the paintings of Bireswar Sen at the National Gallery of Modern Art, Bengaluru. Each watercolour is no bigger than a smartphone, but sliding the magnifying glass over them is like opening a tiny box to reveal an entire world, each with a reserved profoundity.
Had a really good discussion with Milan Vaishnav about the Nehru years for the Grand Tamasha podcast. Also discovered we both like to listen to podcasts at 1.5x speed. So to do this recording justice, do fiddle with the speed settings!
New on
#GrandTamasha
: What if the foundations of the 'Nehruvian consensus'--nonalignment, secularism, socialism, democracy, the strong state, & high modernism--are just myths?
@TaylorCSherman
joins me to discuss her provocative new book, "Nehru's India"
Just finished this complicated, devastating book. There's so much to think with, but my first thoughts are with women who've appealed for justice to trusted authorities & been given only half-measures or nothing at all, women who are forced to fight for dignity, for life.
Speaking (in person, today) about the Indians who made their own modernisms in the 1950s and 1960s, including the architect Urmila Eulie Chowdhury, the development economist Sudhir Sen, the inventor S.P. Raju, and the artist and art critic Jaya Appasamy
The Imperial and World History Seminar is forward to
@TaylorCSherman
'Myth of Authoritarian High Modernism in Independent India', Monday 4 July 5.30 at
@ihr_history
:
Non-alignment: In 1955, as relations opened up between the 2 countires, the Soviet Union's men's football team toured India. They won all 19 games they played against Indian teams, scoring over 100 goals, and conceding only 4.
What company you keep in Hyderabad
@MarcDavidBaer1
! If it were my book, I'd have left it in the presence of Octavia Butler, but in this case I moved these lovelies from the Mystery to the History section at Himalaya Book World.
Starting our sabbatical in the beautiful land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.
New research project: histories of South Asian environmentalism.
Current obsession: popular tree planting drives, including the Van Mahotsav.
Excited to join the convo here
@Sydney_Uni
Feminist fiction fans add this to your must-read list! A woman fakes a pregnancy and gains respect at work and social acceptance. The premise lies somewhere between satire and science-fiction for most women, and Emi Yagi uses it for understated social critique.
Loved this! Kajri Jain argues India's giant statues are not just about Hindu nationalism. She connects their construction to nationalism, democracy and caste assertion, but also to the rise of the automobile and the deregulation of cement.
Had a great
@NewBooksNetwork
conversation with Kajri Jain of
@UofT
about her new
@DukePress
title, "Gods in the Time of Democracy." Available on all podcast platforms!
I have used both these methods in my work, Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths. You can read my chapter on Nehru as a free preview on the
@PrincetonUPress
website.
7. India in this period was confidently internationalist. India's leaders did not see their country as a marginal player in the dramas of the age. They sought to mould the international system and to export India's experiences to decolonising countries in Asia & Africa.
Democracy: In the first general elections of 1951-2, many candidates exceeded the spending limit of Rs.25,000. One candidate was said to have spent 5 lakhs and bought 1000 bicycles to win votes.
The Strong State: Between 1950 and 1964 the state of Bombay/Maharashtra had Prohibition. Residents responded with widespread bootlegging, smuggling booze in everything from fishing baskets to hollowed out books.
Socialism: Many states nationalised road transport in the 1940s, in part to keep buses from competing with trains. For passengers, state control brought regular timetables, fixed bus stops and waiting rooms with snacks and loos. Employees acquired canteens, clubs & paid holidays.
"a seminal book to return to and draw inspiration from for reimagining historiography and conceiving contemporary discourse on India"
Thank you
@pgaurbhat
and LSE Review of Books for this lovely review of Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths!
Absolutely loved this article on how solar energy was feminised and ruralised as it became part of development strategies.
Historians of independent India: note the impressive range of sources
@natterjee
has found - the sources are out there!
Ever wondered about the history of solar energy and why it didn’t take off sooner? A few answers from my article "The Poor Woman’s Energy: Low-Modernist Solar Technologies & International Development, 1878–1966," hot off the presses
@GlobalHistJnl
(🔓!)
Wow! The first review is already out - thanks
@curbset
for your careful reading of Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths.
The official publication date is just around the corner - I can't wait to get my copies from
@PrincetonUPress
@lsehistory
Do read this powerful, beautifully written piece by
@monika_bd
about being a woman of colour in Security Studies/International Relations, and the wider academy.
Many thanks to
@pratinavanil
for this review of Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths, and for reminding me that coruscating has multiple meanings (I think I prefer option 1!).
I still delight in the fact that when I review a book, I get paid in books! Received
@gdrhistoria
's carefully researched book in just such an exchange, and I have learned a lot. It's a reminder that environmentalism never was the monopoly of The West (however defined).
No doubt it'll be hard yakka at times (hope I'm saying that right, Aussie friends?!?), but walking each evening from office to home with Coogee Beach in view might just help ease the stress a bit.
I want to give a shout out to Tim Martin, Digital Director
@CarnegieEndow
who edited this podcast. Tip o' the hat to Tim and to all sound engineers: in cutting out our flubs and restarts, they seem to add IQ points to us humbly-wumbly academics!
Historian
@TaylorCSherman
was my guest on
#GrandTamasha
this week. We discussed her revisionist take on Nehru and the 'Nehruvian consensus.' Full episode here:
And be sure to check out her thought-provoking book, "Nehru's India":
6. This era marked the zenith of the power of India's upper-caste, upper-class elites. Operating in pedagogical mode, they sought to repurpose India's existing hierarchies, not abolish them.
4. Popular mobilisation remained important in the Nehru years. Postcolonial nationalism was a complicated dance: India's leaders sought to rouse in ordinary Indians the will to demand more from government, even as they sought to shape exactly what could be demanded of government.
Someimes to truly understand an historical figure, you have to start with their death. I'm learning a lot from Holy Week, an exploration of the aftermath of Martin Luther King Jr's assassination, by Vann Newkirk.
1. The abstract nouns most strongly associated with Nehru - non-alignment, secularism, socialism, the strong state, democracy and high modernism - have lost their explanatory power. They have become myths. So how can we characterise this period?
5. The leaders of independent India experimented with administrative structures, trying to transform the colonial bureaucracy into an administration suited to a free India. The seminal government projects of the age were designed at a distance from the existing bureaucracy.
3. Rather than being an era of ideological conformity, this was an age of experimentation. India's leaders engaged the methods of mid-century social science as they experimented in fields from low-cost housing to international relations.
@stethospeaks
Books on Bengal not mentioned yet: Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided (1994), The Spoils of Partition (2007), and The Bengal Diaspora (2015). Uditi Sen, Citizen Refugee (2018). Paulomi Chakraborty, The Refugee Woman (2018). Anindita Ghoshal, Refugees, Borders and Identities (2020).
My starting point on Wednesday: the idea that India pursued "Soviet style" socialism in the Nehru Years is a myth fostered by right-wing opposition groups.
Prof.
@TaylorCSherman
from
@lsehistory
is going to give a talk to the
@PKU1898
community titled '“A New Type of Revolution”: Rethinking Socialism in Nehru's India, 1947-1964'. The webinar starts at 19:00 Wed, May 25 Beijing time (12:00 London). Welcome to join us via zoom.
Partha Chatterjee's 'Development Planning and the Indian State', and David Ludden's 'India's Development Regime' are now three decades old and I'm looking for newer takes.
#AcademicTwitter
#twitterstorians
Inspiring women talking about inspiring women! Some of my favourite people speaking at this event, so I'll be staying up late to catch what they have to say...
I found myself nodding along with the argument that "the urban [is] a tentative condition of becoming that is always on the move and inter-mixed with its non-urban other." Also agree one should not question Parisiens when it comes to pastry!
@FramkeMaria
Thanks, Maria! Here's an image I mention but couldn't include in the final text. This awesome young woman is Miss Mainanath Sultan. She ran the Welfare Extension Project in Okhla, near Delhi in 1955, visiting villages on her motorcycle. From the magazine, Social Welfare (1955).
There are a lot of new works on the Nehru years. This research challenges the 'wisdom of the elders' about this period. I included as much as I could in a course called Independent India: Myths of Freedom & Development. Syllabus here:
Updates welcome!
Folks - I'm putting together a syllabus for an introductory course on Indian Society & Politics since 1947. What are some of your favorite readings, movies, podcasts to assign? Grateful for any recommendations!
@akkhan81
The best scholarship doesn't set out to prove or refute the drain of wealth argument. Rather, it explores a sector, region or social group & traces complex, contradictory changes during the colonial encounter. The overall effect cannot be collapsed into a word - drain or growth.
Looking for some suggestions for my 10y.o. son from ppl with
#autism
who also love
#Transport
#TFL
. What else are you into? My son loves trains (maps, announcements, models, etc.), but also gets bored & is looking for other hobbies that are as satisfying. Pls send ideas/retweet.
🧵My thread on Woolgoolga/Wiigulga.
1/ So much that we think we know about Australia just doesn't stick when local history is this rich, this subversive, where 19th century Sikh migrant communities live and work surrounded by the town's namesake Wiigul, Black Apple Tree.
@doctorpoco
RK Narayan's Waiting for the Mahatma (1955) - a gentle exporation of the ambivalences and contradictions of the anticolonial movement, full of tender humour too.
It is a real delight to see students like
@arvmoh97
engaging with the work. Praise is always welcome, but if a new generation takes up the book, building upon the arguments and, yes, even critiquing them a bit too, then I'll feel I've achieved something.
One of the most important roles he had as PM was to sponsor bright, enthusiastic people in pursuing their own projects. As a patron of others, he cut ribbons, cleared obstacles and supported others' efforts. He did not design and direct every programme.
"The family remains the primary site of every woman’s independence struggle. India may have gained freedom from her colonizers, but women are yet to gain independence from family control and its associated caregiving roles", writes
@BShrayana
@rhymingrythm
With no disrespect to all those Apple fans, Macs have never been in my budget. I always buy try to get the best pc for the least money. Recently bought an Acer Swift, and it's doing the job very well. Good luck with the dissertation!
Looking for a new interpretation of Nehru's India in 11 minutes? I lay out my arguments starting at 17:05 on this podcast.
Many thanks to
@karthiknach
and
@Lekhpodcast
for inviting me for a chat.
Final podcast of 2022 live! In this episode, I speak to
@TaylorCSherman
on her recent
@PrincetonUPress
book Nehru's India: A History in Seven Myths, which revisits and reassesses the role Jawaharlal Nehru played in shaping India in those early years.
2. We must move beyond the idea that India had a 'founding moment' lasting from 1947 to either the inauguration of the Constitution or to the first Plan. The drive to transform the country gathered pace from 1952, with government programmes reinvented several times over.
Delighted to see the release of this book from my lovely former colleague, Oscar Webber. Contains insights into how natural disasters expose social & racial hierarchies - important for understanding the British Empire, but also relevant to today's environmental crises.
Big congratulations to friend & colleague Oscar Webber on the release of his great new book! Looking forward to reading it! 👈🏽here’s Oscar in conversation about it
Important argument about recent digital trends in Partition studies: "commemorative projects surrounding Partition have self-consciously depoliticized, dehistorized, and globalized public memory of the events, with further attendant dangers of recreating nationalist narratives"
@sravanthid
There are government records in the Ministry of States files at the National Archives of India that cover the conflict (more detail after 1948). The Sundarayya Vignana Kendram has published materials from the Communists. I had very little luck at the Telangana State Archives.
Learned a lot from this chat about the 1972 Shimla Agreement between India and Pakistan.
@SushantSin
not only busts some popular myths about the agreement, but explains the origins of those myths.
Last week, I spoke to
@NilanjanUdwin
@newsclickin
on 50 years of Simla Agreement, about the myths that have been perpetuated on the talks that brought India and Pakistan an 'imperfect peace' which was definitely better than no peace at all. [In Hindustani]
Historians can look for the person who really ran the project when Nehru was not there. Hint: they will be in the photo next to him laying the foundation stone!
@MenryWY
If you just want them to get an idea more than the detail, use a podcast/video instead of the book. Authors often explain seminal arguments beautifully in interviews. Assigning these also supports neurodivergent students & gives everyone a chance to absorb more without reading.
@moubanerjee28
I'd start by getting the student to let go of the idea that there are fixed stages of development that every society inevitably progresses through. To grasp this, I'd recommend The Dawn of Everything by
@davidwengrow
and
@davidgraeber
Really enjoy these long-form podcasts where we learn about the scholar and the book. For those in a rush, though, (or looking to assign this to students), Nikhil Menon explains his important arguments about India's *democratic* planning in about 8 minutes starting at 3:51:45.
Society can't be designed in a top-down way.
That's why central planning was such a disaster.
Nikhil Menon joins me in episode 306 of The Seen and the Unseen to discuss the flawed genius PC Mahalanobis & the cautionary tale of our planning commission:
Check out this fascinating piece on Urmila Eulie Chowdhury, who lived in Chandigarh for years and designed many buildings there. She was one of a small group of Indian architects who, arguably, had a greater influence on architecture in the city than Le Corbusier.