This book provides an interpretive and comprehensive account of the history of India between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, a crucial epoch characterized by colonialism, nationalism and the emergence of the independent Indian Union. It explores significant historiographical debates concerning the period while highlighting important new issues, especially those of gender, ecology, caste, and labour. The work combines an analysis of colonial and independent India in order to underscore ideologies, policies, and processes that shaped the colonial state and continue to mould the Indian nation.

While it does not forego chronology, it does away with the conventional demarcation of political processes and socio-cultural histories in order to portray the multi-faceted nature of social worlds. This book, masterfully, provokes readers to reflect and interrogate, and strive for newer ways of understanding history.

Strikingly employed visual tools—historical maps, old photographs, posters and imaginative time-lines complement the core narratives. This book will appeal to the scholars, students of history as well as the general readers alike.