Ever optimistic, Vanina records that there may be ‘differences and even conflicts, but on the majority of events and actors of the past there is usually a national agreement’ in favour of ‘mutual respect for differing feelings and affiliations’ (pp. 338-39). This is true for politics and history on an international scale.
Nevertheless, they were able to take advantage of the culture of ‘hospitality’ which had been encouraged by the post-1789 government policy of honouring misfortune (honore le malheur) by way of hospitality (à titre d’hospitalité), which was also decreed by the Comity of Public Safety when granting assistance to ‘Ahmad Khan Indian’.
The soldiers were part of the 2.5 million-strong Indian Army. They were taken prisoners, as the war progressed, in theatres in east and north Africa, the Mediterranean, Europe and on the high seas. They endured five years of incarceration. Included in them were the Viceroy Commissioned Officers (VCO), a category so peculiar to the Indian Army that the confused Germans had to enquire from the British whether they were to be treated as soldiers or officers! Another oddity was that the earliest, and often the longest-serving POWs were not even soldiers.
Rather than limiting itself to the colonial period, the study deliberates at length the socio-economic and political conditions of the YMCA in the post-1947 era. The author highlights the role that the institution played during the Cold War period.
Mysore’s association with a buffalo myth dates back to the latter half of the first millennium. The Wodeyar kings reinvented this myth in the seventeenth century by associating the local female deity with the Pauranic legend of the Goddess slaying Mahisha, the buffalo demon. This foundational myth concerning the Goddess and the city has remained in the popular psyche ever since (pp. 29-30).
The compilation addresses different aspects of Vijayan’s oeuvre, including his literary works, his contributions to political thought, his engagements as a cartoonist, and his role as a translator. In this introductory chapter, EV Ramakrishnan delves into the multi-dimensional persona of Vijayan, analysing how the writer is defined as a ‘critical insider’ within the socio-political and cultural contexts of postcolonial India.