3 Review(s)

In 1940s India, revolutionary and nationalistic sentiments surged against colonial subjecthoodand imperial war. Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British duringthe Second World War, while 3 million civilians were killed by the war-induced Bengal Famine,and Indian National Army soldiers fought against the British for Indian independence. Thiscaptivating new history shines a spotlight on emotions as a way of unearthing these troubled andcontested experiences, exposing the personal as political.Diya Gupta draws upon photographs, letters, memoirs, novels, poetry and philosophical essays inboth English and Bengali languages to weave a compelling tapestry of emotions felt by Indiansin service and at home during the war. She brings to life an unknown sepoy in the MiddleEast yearning for home, and anti-fascist activist Tara Ali Baig; a disillusioned doctor on theBurma frontline, and Sukanta Bhattacharya’s modernist poetry of hunger; Mulk Raj Anand’srevolutionary home front, and Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of civilization.This vivid book recovers a truly global history of the Second World War, revealing the crucialimportance of cultural approaches in challenging a traditional focus on the wartime experiencesof European populations. Seen through Indian eyes, this conflict is no longer the ‘good’ war.