Promotional Information

A history of the international controversy surrounding the 1927 publication of Mother India, an expose of social ills in India written by Katherine Mayo, an American journalist

Table of Contents

About the Series ix
Acknowledgements xi
Note on Nomenclature and Transliteration xv
Introduction: The Anatomy of an Event 1
1. A Transitional Moment: The Dynamics of an Interwar Imperial Social Formation 23
2. Unpredictable Outcome: The Trajectory of a Transatlantic Intervention 66
3. Ironic Reversal: The Rhetoric of “Facts” in the Controversy over Mother India 109
4. Refashioning Mother India: The Sarda Act and Women’s Collective Agency 152
5. Ambiguous Aftermath: Political Consolidation on the Eve of the Second World War 197
Epilogue: History, Memory, Event 248
Notes 255
Bibliography 336
Index 361

About the Author

Mrinalini Sinha is Associate Professor of History and Women’s Studies at Pennsylvania State University. She is the author of Colonial Masculinity: The “Manly Englishman” and the “Effeminate Bengali” in the Late Nineteenth Century and the editor of Mother India: Selections from the Controversial 1927 Text.

Reviews

"This is one of the most important books I've read in a long time, a brilliant and unusual accomplishment. It's full of insights backed by new evidence--from archives around the world--that will change the ways we think about colonialism and decolonization, the role of women in global and national politics, and the theories that can be mobilized to help rethink issues in twentieth-century global history." Bonnie G. Smith, author of The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice "It is rarely that one can say of an academic book that it is unputdownable, but Specters of Mother India is just that. It is not only that it is written with a narrative skill not always to be found in historical studies, but that it offers a fresh and compelling argument about a short but crucial period (1925-1935) in pre-Independence India, as an historical turning-point. Mrinalini Sinha's reading of Katherine Mayo's Mother India as symptom and catalyst of the radical shifts that occurred in this period will impact on a number of fields, well beyond South Asian history. The monumental scholarship and stupendous historical reach of this book are breathtaking." Rajeswari Sunder Rajan, author of The Scandal of the State: Women, Law, and Citizenship in Postcolonial India "This is no ordinary history of a text; with impressive scholarship and historical imagination, Mrinalini Sinha reads the controversy surrounding the publication of Katherine Mayo's book as a fascinating chapter in the interwar history of colonialism. Questions of the empire and imperial legitimacy, the nation and its others, and feminism and citizenship emerge as issues thrown open by the historical location and reception of Mother India. This is a work of vital importance to the study of the colonial genealogy of the modern world."--Gyan Prakash, author of Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India