Tag Archives: Europe

What Islamic Enlightenment?

15 Sat Apr 2017

Posted by in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on What Islamic Enlightenment?

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Islamic EnlightenmentDe Bellaigue, Christopher. The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle Between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2017. 432 pp.

The end of the Cold War did not usher in a thousand years of peace; nor did it see the end of History. Instead, even as the victorious Western alliance was popping champagne, a new menace was taking shape in the Islamic world. Terrorism was certainly not a new phenomenon, but the global reach and sophistication of what emerged in the closing decade of the second millennium was unsurpassed. Samuel Huntington famously – controversially – called it a clash of civilisations. Whether he was right or not, the Age of Terrorism has come to be deeply linked to Islam. It is this perception that Christopher de Bellaigue hopes to dispel. His latest book, The Islamic Enlightenment: The Struggle between Faith and Reason, 1798 to Modern Times, is meant to be a riposte against Western historians, politicians, and commentators who repeatedly demand that Islam join the 21st century, that it should “subject itself to the same intellectual and social transformations that the West experienced from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.” To those who clamour for an Islamic Enlightenment, Reformation, and Renaissance, to those insisting that the religion of Muhammad develop a sense of humour, de Bellaigue’s response is that it already has, albeit with a particular cultural touch.

Westerners have not generally come to the East with open minds and in their inability to see past a European universalism, de Bellaigue contends, have missed the fact that not all Muslims are primitive, regressive terrorists. In fact, the Islamic world has not shown any more hostility towards modernity than Christendom did a couple of centuries earlier. The author dates the clash between European modernity and Islam in 1798 with the arrival of Napoleon Bonaparte’s army on the shores of Egypt. De Bellaigue astutely observes that Western ideas were initially absorbed with greater success when they were perceived to be universal than later, after World War I, when they were seen as the business end of a hostile ideology.

Islamic Enlightenment locates the foci of modernisation in Cairo, Istanbul, and Tehran, where numerous figures, nationalists, litterateurs, monarchists, as well as the ulema, engaged with Western science, technology, and political science to adapt them to the needs of Islamically-minded societies. However, many of the modernisers were inspired not by the trinkets and gimmicks of European innovation but by the achievements of classical Islamic civilisation. De Bellaigue narrates the tales of modernisers of all shades. Some were intrinsically hostile to Western methods yet awed by them such as Abdulrahman al-Jabarti; others infused the “genius of Islam” in the universal knowledge the West possessed such as Rifa’a al-Tahtawi. Some of the reformers were optimistic of Western intentions in the Muslim world such as Muhammad Abduh, while others felt forced into reforms such as the Ottoman sultans Abdulmecid I and Abdulaziz. There were, of course, a few who saw modernity as a means to power and pursued Western knowledge with a purely secular interest such as Muhammad Ali Pasha. Regardless, the author notes, a liberalising, modernising tendency had emerged strongly in the Middle East.

This pushback against Islamophobia is laudable yet eventually flawed in its conception. Fundamentally, Islamic Enlightenment tries to pack into one term what in Europe properly describes at least four zeitgeists – the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the Industrial Revolution. It is difficult to imagine, at least in Europe, an Enlightenment that was not preceded by the Reformation and the Renaissance. It was the rediscovery of the classical world and an emphasis on humanism based on reason that caused the first crack in the totalising edifice of the Christian faith. Renaissance intellectuals did not necessarily reject religion but there was, nonetheless, a subtle shift in the way they approach it. The Reformation continued this trend in two important ways – first, and more obvious, is the theological schism between Catholicism and Protestantism, and second, the savagery and horrendous toll of the Thirty Years’ War – between a third and half of the population of Europe – finally broke the power of the Church in temporal matters after the peace at Westphalia in 1648.

These two short yet turbulent epochs paved the way for the Enlightenment. Made receptive to a gradual shift from faith to reason, autocracy to democracy, European society broadly supported the principles of the Enlightenment even if not the pace of some of its most forceful advocates. The Counter-Enlightenment remained a German nationalistic rebellion against French supremacy in the arts rather than a full-blooded critique of the Enlightenment itself. Various aspects of Enlightenment thinking – in the arts, political reform, economic reorganisation, religious reconceptualisation – were realised over the next century and half in step with the Industrial Revolution.

De Bellaigue’s brief history of 19th century reform movements in the Middle East – to which he devotes half the book – describes abortive attempts at modernisation that underscores this point further. Middle Eastern – Islamic? – attempts to replicate Europe’s material successes failed precisely because they focused purely on the material aspects of the European experience without adequately contemplating on the socio-cultural reformations that had taken place since the late 14th century that had brought Europe to a place whence the Enlightenment was possible. ‘Enlightenment with an Islamic flavour’ deviates sufficiently from the European experience that it cannot be herded under the same umbrella.

As de Bellaigue narrates, most Muslim modernisers were enthralled by Western science and technology but retained their faith in the supremacy of Islam. Even secular, power-hungry rulers and administrators were loathe to go to war against the ulema in the name of Western science or progress for fear that they would destabilise their kingdoms and lose their thrones, or worse, their lives. This was not an altogether unfounded fear, as Mirza Taki Khan Farahani found out in a bathhouse in Kashan.

Reforms with largely material goals in mind can hardly be termed an Enlightenment. If technology were the sole arbiter of progress, some of today’s most visious terrorist groups such as the Taliban, al Qa’ida, and ISIS could be said to be progressive. All the major terrorist groups in the 21st century have access to highly sophisticated weaponry and knowledge of explosives and tactics to challenge most national armies, an equation that Middle Eastern rulers of two centuries ago would have yearned for. The pitfall of such progress is visible – although the armies of Muslim states reduced the technological gap between themselves and their European counterparts over the 19th century, there was a backlash against cooperation with Europe after World War I that returned the socio-political situation almost to where it had been a hundred years earlier.

It is also difficult to understand how de Bellaigue considers the fervour of the 19th century as an Enlightenment when many of the most influential actors, be they pashas, clerics, or men of science, continued to cast a sheep’s eye on Islam. Nor was this the Islam of the 10th century Mu’tazilites, a relatively open faith not allergic to external knowledge or inquiry. By the time of Napoleon’s Egyptian expedition, it was well past the era of Abu Hamid Muhammad ibn Muhammad al-Ghazali or Taqi ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyya and the closing of the Muslim mind. This Islam, intrinsically regressive as Shiraz Maher argues in his excellent Salafi-Jihadism: The History of an Idea, looked to the era of its prophet and his companions as the most perfect era in human history and was, thus, fundamentally antithetical to reason. This is not to say that such a society cannot change, but there is certainly a big question mark on whether such a society is capable of an Enlightenment.

Finally, the European Age of Imperialism was not an epoch of liberalism in the Middle East. None of the bold reformers of Egypt, Turkey, or Iran were democrats in the spirit of Jacques Pierre Brissot. In fact, all of de Bellaigue’s examples were despots whose liberal tendencies ended outside the throne room. The question for the author becomes whether it is possible for autocrats to usher in an Enlightenment. Unintentionally, Islamic Enlightenment serves as a warning to Western politicians who believe that they can play midwife to liberal democracy in the Middle East: even when such an endeavour had local support, it was not quite liberal and eventually failed.

All said and done, de Bellaigue is not wrong in his larger point. There is a tendency to view Islamic societies as intrinsically defective and prone to violence. This is no more true for them than it is for Christian societies, especially in the past, even the recent past. A little nuance beyond the sterile dichotomies an attention-deficit media churns out is required in reading the politics of the Middle East. However, nuance cannot be an excuse to whitewash all sorts of regressive social customs and political beliefs. No one sane thinks all Muslims are terrorists but there is a gradation of radicalisation in the Muslim world from terrorists to those who, for example, think blasphemy and apostasy should be punishable by death, to a far more tolerant and humanist sample. Although our attention is held mostly by one extreme end of the spectrum, it is only prudent to consider whether problems also lie further along the spectrum. Furthermore, while a more pleasant distant past holds out hope, it is only natural that it is the stormy present that educates our policies and beliefs.

It is tragic that those who are convinced of de Bellaigue’s broader message probably do not need his book as much and are already familiar with the research of scholars like Majid Fakhry, Lenn Goodman, Marshall Hodgson, and Ira Lapidus. Those who are not convinced, however, will likely not be persuaded by his book or even read it.

An Alternative Europe

08 Sat Apr 2017

Posted by in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on An Alternative Europe

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Heart of EuropeWilson, Peter. The Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire. Cambridge: The Belknap Press, 2016. 1008 pp.

Perhaps the most widely known thing about the Holy Roman Empire is the one credited to French philosophe François-Marie Arouet, who quipped in 1761 that the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy, nor Roman, nor Empire. The Frenchman was not alone in disparaging the Central European polity. James Madison, when looking for a model of a federal union for his republic in the New World, remarked upon the European sovereignty that it was a “nerveless body; incapable of regulating its own members; insecure against external dangers, and agitated with unceasing fermentation in its bowels. [Its history was simply a catalogue] of the licentiousness of the strong, and the oppression of the weak…of general imbecility, confusion, and misery.” Peter Wilson, Chichele Professor of the History of War at All Souls College, University of Oxford, pushes back against this entrenched negative impression of the Holy Roman Empire in his masterful new book, Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire.

Part of the prejudice may come from the fact that the demise of the Holy Roman Empire coincided with the rise of the nation-state. Ideologues then and historians since have written the European saga as one of progress towards the modern, centralised, ethnic nation-state and the Holy Roman Empire had no place in a world where every nation was supposed to have its own state. Thus, it achieved the reputation of a failed state for no doing of its own. Moreover, distortions have crept in as historians seeking to explain the character of modern Germany looked to the Holy Roman Empire – not to understand it on its own terms but to project later events into the past.

Wilson’s tale begins with the “surprise” coronation of Charlemagne by Pope Leo III on Christmas Day in 800 as the King of the Romans. The Frankish chieftain was seen as carrying on the legacy of Rome. This was important to medieval Christian theology which prophesised the arrival of the Kingdom of God after the fall of the fourth great empire – Babylonia, Medes-Persia, Greece, and Rome. It was not until 962, however, that an emperor – Otto I – was crowned specifically as the ruler of a Holy Roman Empire. His decisive victory over the pagan Magyars at the Battle of Lechfeld in 955 earned him a reputation as the saviour of Christendom.

A chronological history of the Holy Roman Empire would be a nightmare to write and even more challenging to understand. A mosaic of principalities, free cities, grand duchies, kingdoms, and even confederations, the imperial polity had no clear hierarchy of authority. Authority was not concentrated in an imperial capital but was diffuse in several of the major cities in the emperor’s domain – Augsburg, Milan, Antwerp, Prague, Leipzig, Hamburg, Vienna, and elsewhere. This befuddling framework governed by consensus of its parts rather than by coercion, the bewildering diversity of communities and practices protected by imperial decree rather than assimilated.

Instead, Wilson chooses to present a thematic analysis of the Holy Roman Empire and his book is divided into four parts: ideal, belonging, governance, and society. What is important for the author to tell his readers, in this book at least, is not what happened but how things worked. The past is a foreign country, as British novelist LP Hartley memorably opened his The Go-Between with in 1953, and Wilson endeavours to ensure that we comprehend its values, priorities, politics, relations, dynamics – in short, its entire weltanshauung.

Despite a political system that must appear unfathomable to the modern reader, the Holy Roman Empire proved adept at governance. It established the world’s first postal system in 1490 and the world’s first newspaper, a weekly, in 1605; the first imperial daily had to wait until 1635, still 67 years ahead of England’s Daily Courant. Almost every town had a lending library by the 18th century and there were over 200 publishers and 8,000 authors in the Holy Roman Empire – twice that of France which had a comparable population. There was relatively little censorship and even that was usually only at the local level. The Holy Roman Empire had 45 universities in its realm by 1800, while France had 22 and England just two.

This is not to say that such a decentralised system ran always ran smoothly or efficiently. Trade was particularly difficult given the shifting currencies and endless tolls; a pound of pepper, for example, could almost double in price simply by traversing from one end of the Holy Roman Empire to the other due to the taxes in each principality.

Foreign policy was no picnic either, with different regions of the Holy Roman Empire associating in leagues such as the Hanseatic League, Swabian League of Cities, the Lusatian League, the Alsatian Décapole, and the Lombard League. Some of these, such as the Hanseatic League, was a loose confederation of merchant guilds, who, at the zenith of their power, were strong enough to declare war on Denmark and Norway to extract trading concessions from King Valdemar IV and King Haakon VI. These semi-independent actions, needless to say, influenced imperial policy as well.

Other alliances, such as the Swabian League of Cities and the Alsatian Décapole were formed to ensure that their members do not lose their rights in the constant imperial power shuffles while others were created to defend local regions from the Emperor. The Lombard League, for example, was formed to defend Italy from the German Staufen dynasty which held the imperial reins then. Paradoxically, the papal-supported Lombard League did not wish to secede from the Christian empire.

Despite his thematic approach, Wilson does adhere to some semblance of chronology within his sections. He traces his core ideas through the Carolingian dynasty, followed by the Ottonians, Salians, Staufen, Luxembourgs, and finally the Habsburgs. Minor interruptions in dynastic succession such as the Wittelsbach, Welf, Supplinburg, Unruoching, Bosonid, or Widonid houses naturally get less of a mention. However, the author rejects the narrative of progress and nationhood as so many historians before him have told. As Prasenjit Duara, in his thought-provoking Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China, has argued, Wilson also resists the temptation to depict regionalism – whether due to religion, language, or ethnicity – as meaningless fratricide that diminishes from the unified national edifice. Imperial subjects had multiple identities within a complex framework of allegiances and hierarchies. A Münchner could be a Catholic, a burgher, a guildsman, a father, and a Bavarian. The Holy Roman Empire did not “fail” to evolve into a German nation because none of its imperial subjects felt the need for such a development.

Despite producing a thought-provoking and rich work on the history of one of Europe’s important yet less understood empires, Heart of Europe, at 1,008 pages, is likely to be a daunting read for most people. In all fairness, Wilson has done his best to minimise the length of this convoluted saga but unfortunately, it may only serve to confuse the average reader more. For example, even the average reader might be expected to know of Charles V, Stupor Mundi, the Golden Bull of 1356, the Battle of Bouvines in which the Holy Roman Empire fought on both sides, or the Seven Years’ War and use these events and personages as markers in the longer history of medieval Europe. However, Wilson gives most such major events and figures short shrift in his narrative with the result that only those with a solid background in European history would be able to appreciate the author’s mammoth effort. Even the non-academic prose of Heart of Europe does not redeem its readability for most.

Seen from a global perspective, the Holy Roman Empire was not as unique as it appeared in Europe. The Ottoman Empire, its close neighbour, was also socially diverse though politically more centralised. Some of the Holy Roman Empire’s Indian contemporaries were also comparable in their diversity and pluralism. For that matter, even the modern Indian republic is no less confounding. Compared to these empires, the Roman Empire was a far greater claimant to the label of modern with a genuine sense of civic nationalism.

Heart of Europe‘s publication at a critical juncture in the history of the European Union is bound to draw comparisons. Wilson himself points to the similarities between the two – permeable boundaries, multi-layered jurisdictions, a byzantine bureaucracy, consensus-driven policy. However, he is also the first to warn the reader that such similarities should not lead one to advocate a neo- Holy Roman Empire as a solution to the European Union’s difficulties. For one, modern sensibilities regarding equality cannot coexist with the hierarchical nature of the Holy Roman Empire’s domains to the emperor and to one another. Second, it remains to be seen if society can genuinely transcend its monotheistic fetish, whether expressed as nation or deity.

Wilson’s monograph is a substantial one in heft as well as content and deserves careful consideration. It is not for the casual reader nor is it amenable to yielding quick solutions to current problems in world affairs. Belying its chatty style is a rigorous academic tome that requires an equally rigorous and disciplined reader.

The Roots of Indian Foreign Policy

04 Sat Mar 2017

Posted by in Book Review

≈ Comments Off on The Roots of Indian Foreign Policy

Tags

, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

making-of-indias-foreign-policyPrasad, Bimal. The Making of India’s Foreign Policy: The Indian National Congress And World Affairs, 1885-1947. Delhi: Vitasta Publishing, 2013. 301 pp.

It is easy to forget, sometimes, that the roots of a country’s foreign policy are always embedded in its domestic politics and experiences. Postcolonial states are no exception to this rule, but a rupture in the continuity of self-rule – usually at a critical time in world history when the global order was undergoing major economic, technological, and political upheavals – left them inexperienced in the ways of the international community. Some states, such as India, were newly created and had no memory of ever having had to navigate international politics while holding together a state that defied every understanding of nationalism. Originally published in 1960 but reprinted in 2013 at the urging of former foreign secretary Muchkund Dubey and columnist C Raja Mohan, Bimal Prasad’s The Making of Indian Foreign Policy: The Indian National Congress and World Affairs delves into the formative period of a modern Indian international outlook to suggest the antecedents that have informed Indian foreign policy in its independent era.

The Indian National Congress did not begin in 1885 as an organisation opposed to British rule of India. Rather, in its early years, it affirmed the loyalty of Indians to the Crown and worked to create for them a position of equality within the British imperial system. This is not much different from the position of Mohandas Gandhi, who until the end of World War I, argued against racial and exploitative policies of the Raj rather than its imperial venture.

Indian nationalists and the INC voiced opposition to British adventures in Afghanistan, Tibet, and elsewhere at the expense of India’s development. They were not convinced of the London’s paranoia about the security of the jewel in the English imperial crown, and condemned operations against Russia and China in much the same tone as international opinion surrounding the American invasion of Iraq in the noughties. The break came, oddly, with the signing of the Treaty of Sevres on May 14, 1920, which dismembered the Ottoman Empire and terminated the Caliphate. Indian Muslims were agitated by the events unfolding in the Middle East, and Gandhi saw it as unduly harsh and uncaring of the sentiments of millions of the Crown’s Indian Muslim subjects. Additionally, the refusal to accede to India dominion status cemented a distrust of British motives in India. This late divergence is curious, given English behaviour ever since they rose to power in the subcontinent in the mid-18th century.

The Indian world view was always outward looking. Even three decades before Jawaharlal Nehru’s non-alignment would become a pillar of Indian foreign policy and a pan-Asian gefühl its flavour, Indian nationalists were not isolationist and particular but sought international cooperation against imperialism. In 1920, for example, the INC paid homage to the memory of Irish patriot Terence MacSwiney and send a message of sympathy to the Irish people. As Gandhi declared in his presidential address to the Congress in 1924, “the better mind of the world desired not absolutely independent states warring one against another, but a federation of friendly interdependent states.” Nehru set up a Foreign Department within the Congress in 1930 and within a year, it had made contact with over 400 groups, organisations, and individuals worldwide. Henceforth, the party would also get regular reports from around the world on important political ideas and developments.

Nehru’s views on the Soviet Union, commonly understood to have formed in his college-day flirtations with Fabian socialism, were influenced more profoundly by the events of the 1920s. Gandhi, Nehru, and others began the decade being critical of Bolshevism and Marxism. The change came in 1927 when Nehru attended the Brussels Congress and attended the committee meetings of the League against Imperialism. Not only did the future prime minister develop sympathies for the Third International, he was amazed by the changes sweeping the Soviet Union. Nehru believed India and the Soviet Union to be in the same boat – recipients of Western hostility/imperialism, largely agrarian, and with a large, mostly illiterate population. If the Soviets could catapult themselves to the forefront of nations with their new methods, India would do well to learn from them. This is not to say that Nehru was blind to the totalitarian nature of Iosif Dzhugashvili’s state but his contagious enthusiasm for the scientific and technological revolution taking place to India’s north spread among his fellow Congressmen.

Admiration for the Soviet Union was fanned by imperialist misbehaviour worldwide. As the Jewish question came to a boil in the Middle East, Nehru and Gandhi came to view the Balfour Declaration as another example of the imposition of imperialist whims on a defenceless subject population. Italy’s invasion of Abyssinia in 1936, the abdication of responsibility of European powers in the Spanish Civil War the same year, silence at the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, and the supplication of the victors of Versailles to Adolf Hitler in Munich in 1938, all while the Soviet Union alone spoke stridently against imperialism understandably had an effect on Indian nationalists.  Nehru came to believe that London and Paris were deliberately stoking fascism in Europe as a counter to Bolshevism. “Perhaps what moved these reactionary governments in so-called democratic countries,” he wrote with reference to Munich, “was not fear of defeat but fear of victory, for that victory would have been a victory of real democracy and possibly an end of fascism in Europe. Fascism had to be kept going in Europe whatever the cost.”

Although India recognised Israel in September 1950, the INC did not wish to pursue full diplomatic relations with the Jewish state. Following recognition, the Indian prime minister explained that Delhi would have recognised Israel even sooner but did not wish to offend the sentiments of India’s “friends in Arab countries.” The Congress antipathy towards Israel – despite acceptance of occasional covert assistance – was that neither Gandhi nor Nehru sympathised with the idea of a Jewish national home. They saw no reason why Jews should not, like other communities, make their country of birth or residence their home. This did not mean that there was no sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Europe: Nehru wrote, “Few people could withhold their deep sympathy from the Jews for the centuries-long oppression to which they have been subjected all over Europe. Fewer still could repress their indignation at the barbarities and racial suppression of the Jews which the Nazis had indulged in during the last few years.” Gandhi added, “if there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified.”

Then, as now, the fever of symbolism ran high in the Congress: May 9, 1936, was observed as Abyssinia Day, September 27, 1936 was recognised as Palestine Day, and June 12, 1938, was celebrated as China Day. “Let the Czechs know,” Gandhi cabled, “the [Congress] Working Committee] wrung itself with pain while their [Czechoslovakia] doom was being decided.”

The turbulence and turmoil in the world did not alter Gandhi’s mind about the value of non-violent struggle. In matters of defence, Nehru was the pragmatic one. While Gandhi advocated a post-independence guarantee of protection from Britain, Nehru believed in a world balance of power; while the former looked to civil disobedience, the latter wanted a speedy reconstruction of defence forces. The idea of an Asian federation of state had been popular with INC leaders of the 1920s but Nehru clarified that this arrangement of collective security must be based upon a complete elimination of imperialism. Pacts led by certain Western governments in the furtherance of their narrow imperialist intentions were no solution to the problems of the world.

Clearly, the material for the formulation of independent India’s foreign policy was forged in its struggle to throw off the yoke of British imperialism. The INC’s partiality towards the Soviet Union stemmed from the fact that it was the only major world power that reliably spoke out against imperialism in the two and half decades between the Congress’ disillusionment with British rule at the end of World War I  and independence. With constant provocations from imperial Europe, it is not difficult to see why early Indian leaders would develop an affinity for the USSR. This remained the mindset during the Nehru years and ossified into a reflexive policy, albeit with some justification, after his death. Critics may fault the prime minister’s intellectual nimbleness as the whole world changed after 1945 but not the initial grounds for attraction.

Similarly, India’s Israel policy seems to have been based on its domestic experience. Opposed to the idea of a confessional Muslim state being carved out of India, the Congress could hardly support a Jewish state being carved out of a no man’s land that had been inhabited by Muslims and Arabs for the last two millennia. The INC leadership had no practical solutions to the Jewish question but to term their position as ignorant of history is not entirely accurate either. Again, critics of India’s Israel policy seem to have a stronger case against the Congress’ inflexibility between 1950 and 1992 than against the original logic behind Nehru’s position on the Jewish state.

Nehru’s talk of an Asian federation petered out after independence and he was not keen on the alphabet soup of pacts the United States was forming around the world to contain communism. Loy Henderson, the second US ambassador to India (not counting Benjamin Joy), has opined that Nehru’s anti-Americanism came from his days at elite English institutions of public education. This may be partially true but another source could well be that, from the perspective of Indian nationalists, the United States did little to aid India’s independence despite its rhetoric. The efforts of Indians living in America and even Americans, clergy, journalists, and politicians, endeared the former British colony to Gandhi. Political pressure upon London was also gratefully accepted. However, the 20th century saw the US inching closer to Britain on a number of issues due to geopolitics. In this need for greater bonhomie, the Indian cause was put on the back burner. In 1942, Gandhi told an American journalist that India was willing to accept UN troops on its soil to ward off a potential Japanese invasion if Washington would intercede with London on Delhi’s behalf to leave the subcontinent. The Congress believed that India was in danger merely because she was a Crown colony and Tokyo would otherwise have no interest in South Asia. Franklin Roosevelt was not convinced, and Indian independence meant little to him during a war that was tearing down the very edifice of Western civilisation. This indifference, combined with the lack of faith in US-led multilateral defence organisations, may have soured Nehru to the United States as much as his aristocratic schooling.

Prasad’s book presents a useful background to the development of Indian foreign policy and is an important contribution to the field. Its proximity to events and figures makes up for its datedness, and although it may not have the turgid prose expected of academic research these days, it makes a persuasive argument with a good footing in the documents available to the author then. It is easy to see why anyone would urge for The Making of Indian Foreign Policy to be republished: in a time when India is undergoing another political and socioeconomic transition, it is always a good idea to briefly glance back at whence we came to understand where we may want to go.