The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars

The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars
Author: Gajendra Singh
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 254
Release: 2014-01-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1780937601

In the two World Wars, hundreds of thousands of Indian sepoys were mobilized, recruited and shipped overseas to fight for the British Crown. The Indian Army was the chief Imperial reserve for an empire under threat. But how did those sepoys understand and explain their own war experiences and indeed themselves through that experience? How much did their testimonies realise and reflect their own fragmented identities as both colonial subjects and imperial policemen? The Testimonies of Indian Soldiers and the Two World Wars draws upon the accounts of Indian combatants to explore how they came to terms with the conflicts. In thematic chapters, Gajendra Singh traces the evolution of military identities under the British Raj and considers how those identities became embattled in the praxis of soldiers' war testimonies – chiefly letters, depositions and interrogations. It becomes a story of mutiny and obedience; of horror, loss and silence. This book tells that story and is an important contribution to histories of the British Empire, South Asia and the two World Wars.

Parliamentary Papers

Parliamentary Papers
Author: Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons
Publisher:
Total Pages: 1110
Release: 1909
Genre: Bills, Legislative
ISBN:

Pukhtun Economy and Society (Routledge Revivals)

Pukhtun Economy and Society (Routledge Revivals)
Author: Akbar Ahmed
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 451
Release: 2013-04-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 113659891X

First published in 1980, this groundbreaking Routledge Revival is a reissue of an original and authentic anthropological account of Pukhtun society by Professor Akbar Ahmed. Combining extensive fieldwork data collected among the Mohmand tribe in the Northwest Frontier Province of Pakistan with historical and literary sources, Professor Ahmed’s study seeks to construct an ideal-type model of Pukhtun society based on the ideal Code of the Pukhtuns and to analyse the conditions of its maintenance and transformation. The author’s thesis is that this ideal model exists within Pukhtun society when interaction with larger state systems is minimal and in poor economic zones. In this way he posits an opposition between the Tribal Agencies along the border with Afghanistan, where ecological conditions are poor and state influence minimal, and the Settled Areas under state administration where Pukhtun society is forced away from its ideals.