Dear Colleagues,
I am happy to announce the publication of my second book, an anthology titled Banned & Censored: What the British Raj Didn't Want Us to Read.
About the Book
Banned & Censored dives into the history of sedition and censorship in colonial India. Seventy-five years after India’s independence from British rule, it carries excerpts from and closely examines seventy-five texts that the colonial state banned, censored or deemed seditious.
These lost gems from the Indian freedom movement include writings by figures famous and obscure, of events immortalized and forgotten, by Indians and non-Indians, by people jailed and free, by politicians and intellectuals, revolutionaries and students, and in several Indian languages.
From the profoundly influential Hind Swaraj by Mahatma Gandhi to the ‘seditious’ Yugantar circular issued by the Hindustan Ghadr Party, each excerpt – taken from books, articles, poems and pamphlets – illuminates not just its author’s thought processes, but the times in which it was composed and circulated.
Key Features
- First anthology of banned literature, with excerpts from texts originally written in nine languages and composed in all parts of India.
- There are context notes for each decade, an editorial introduction for each of the 75 excerpts, and an illuminating overall introduction.
- Extensive use of primary sources, which allows academic researchers to use the book as a base for their further research.
- It can also be used as a sourcebook of primary sources for college-level courses on South Asia.
- Wide appeal: This book will appeal to students and teachers of journalism, book history, legal history, political and social history of India in the 20th century.
- Based on a wide variety of primary and mostly unpublished sources scattered in libraries and archives in India, the UK and Germany.
- Accessible and lively language.
- Timely in the present context of debates on censorship in India and in the world.
Book Information
- Editor: Devika Sethi, Assistant Professor, IIT Mandi, India. Author of War over Words: Censorship in India, 1930-60 (Cambridge University Press, 2019)
- Title: Banned & Censored: What the British Raj Didn't Want Us to Read
- Publication Date: 2023
- Publisher: Roli Books
- Hardcover: 352 pages
- ISBN-10: 9392130643
- ISBN-13: 978-9392130649
Further Information
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