The Raj Syndrome: A Study in Imperial Perceptions

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This book seeks to appreciate the trends of imperial perceptions of India and her institutions. Thematically, the drift and propensities of imperial perceptions etched out here are valid for the whole period of Raj which was initiated with the assumption of authority by the British crown from the East India Company. The Delhi durbar of 1877 signified the frank and unambiguous demonstration by the Raj of its determination to hold India. The book attempts to capture the broad parameters and intricate detours of imperial perceptions of India especially since the over-confident days of the adolescent Raj in the mid-seventies of the nineteenth century.The Raj was the central piece of the British empire. Its influence in imperial strategy was enormous. Economic power, military authority and diplomatic ascendancy of the empire were sustained by the centrality of the Raj in British imperial psychology. The Raj was almost a national obsession in Britain. Its demise caused an equally compelling neurosis. India deposited in British national consciousness layers of racial silt. British sensibility with regard to the Raj, therefore, displayed an arrogant and an authoritarian programme which was quite different from the fraternal fellow-feelings which were displayed towards Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia.The primary object of the work is to weave a pattern and discover a meaning in imperial sensibility.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Suhash Chakravarty

Suhash Chakravarty was born in Maihar (Madhya Pradesh). Educated at St. Stephen's College, Delhi, and Selwyn College Cambridge, he obtained a Master's degree in history from the University of Delhi and went on to take his Doctorate from Cambridge. He returned to teach history at St. Stephen's College and later became a Reader and then a Professor at Delhi University. He spent a year at Selwyn College as a Visiting Fellow (1977-78) and a term at Humboldt University, Berlin, as a term at Humboldt University, Berlin, as a Visiting Professor (1991). He served as a sectional President of the Indian History Congress in its session at Calcutta (1990). His other Books include From Khyber to Oxus: A Study in Imperial Expansion (1976), Anatomy of the Raj (1991), The Raj Syndrome (1989), V.K. Krishna Menon and the Indian League Vol. I and Vol. II (1997), The Rajcharitmanas in Hindi (1998) and India League's Condition of India (1999). In 1991, he was awarded a Nehru national fellowship by the Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund to work on V.K. Krishna Menon and the India League. Suhash chakravarty writes with verve, clarity, wit and at times with biting sarcasm. His range of scholarship is extensive and his historical craftsmanship has been widely acclaimed. He is interested in poetry, music and political analysis. He lives with his wife and son in Delhi.