The Gyanendra Pandey: OMNIBUS

Gyanendra Pandey’s writings have profoundly influenced our understanding of anti-colonial nationalism, communal strife, and history-writing. This omnibus brings together three landmark books by him that describe an arc from a critique of nationalism to a critique of history. By uncovering the layered character of Indian nationalism and underlining the contests between classes, communities, and aspirations that went into its making. The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh helps to transform the received understanding of the Indian national movement.The Construction of communalism in Colonial North India, described as a classic of modern Indian history and sociology, re-envisions the relationship between communalism and nationalism, and argues that what is called communalism in the subcontinent gained a great deal of its force from its likeness to nationalism. In Remembering Partition, Gyanendra Pandey turns to a more direct investigation of the matter of collective violence, and the history and memory of such violence, in the making of communities and nations, in the Indian subcontinent and elsewhere. Unified by an attention to two questions, ‘Whose nation is this?’ and ‘Whose history?’ this collection raises a fundamental question about what counts as the historical–a question that is adjacent to feminist and other critiques of the declared boundaries of the political. In his introduction, written especially for this omnibus, Gyanendra Pandey highlights the need for ongoing engagement with the ‘unpalatable’ and the ‘fragmentary’, moment that interrupt the received narratives of mainstream nationalism and standard history.An indispensable collection for scholars and students of modern South Asian history, sociology, anthropology, and politics as well as those interested in subaltern, postcolonial and cultural studies.