For a long time, almost till the beginning of the nineteenth century, military engineers (who began receiving formal training on a regular basis only when the Company’s Military Seminary was set up at Addiscombe in 1809) carried out the tasks of architects, civil engineers and town planners. Civil engineers as distinct from military engineers were not appointed by the Company prior to the end of the eighteenth century.
Reid implies that Churchill lost interest in India affairs thereafter. But like many historians, he fails to ask: was that not an act of gross negligence, given that War-weary Britain’s exit from India was inevitable by then? Those ‘wasted years’, with all top INC leaders held incommunicado in jail, August 1942 to May 1945, was precisely the time to prepare for the world’s greatest political carve-out. One result: Mountbatten’s frenzied, hasty actions of March-August 1947, when even the borders of the new independent states, India and Pakistan, were not publicly revealed till 17 August, two days after the Independence of India.
In the final chapter, Roy talks about Kashmir. Here, he notes the plight of Kashmiris, who live on the edge of a cultural and political chasm that shapes their social interaction with the rest of Indian society. Also, in commenting on the complex lives of (militant) women in Kashmir, Roy tells us about their painful encounters with violent, patriarchal bands of self-righteous men.
The assassination of Gandhi marked a new stage in the history of the RSS. The organization, due to the immense public anger against it, and the imprisonment of Golwalkar, was forced to change its strategy. It was compelled to cease its violent actions and adopt measures which were acceptable in a sane society.
Some, though not all, of these aspects emerge from Purandare’s lucid prose. Strangely enough, the book has no bibliography but in the notes the reader will notice the major secondary sources, including biographies, on which the book is based; NC Kelkar (Marathi, 1923), Bhagwat and Pradhan (English, 2016), NR Phatak (Marathi, 1972), and Keer (English, 1959) are copiously drawn upon.
Rai argues that during Gandhi’s lifetime, communal and caste conflicts emerged as the most serious challenges before India and Gandhi started many programmes and campaigns to tackle these problems.