India in the Second World War: An Emotional History

In 1940s India revolutionary and nationalistic sentiments surged against colonial subjecthoodand imperial war. Two-and-a-half million men from undivided India served the British duringthe Second World War while 3 million civilians were killed by the war-induced Bengal Famineand Indian National Army soldiers fought against the British for Indian independence. Thiscaptivating new history shines a spotlight on emotions as a way of unearthing these troubled andcontested experiences exposing the personal as political.<br><br>Diya Gupta draws upon photographs letters memoirs novels poetry and philosophical essays inboth English and Bengali languages to weave a compelling tapestry of emotions felt by Indiansin service and at home during the war. She brings to life an unknown sepoy in the MiddleEast yearning for home and anti-fascist activist Tara Ali Baig; a disillusioned doctor on theBurma frontline and Sukanta Bhattacharya’s modernist poetry of hunger; Mulk Raj Anand’srevolutionary home front and Rabindranath Tagore’s critique of civilization. <br><br>This vivid book recovers a truly global history of the Second World War revealing the crucialimportance of cultural approaches in challenging a traditional focus on the wartime experiencesof European populations. Seen through Indian eyes this conflict is no longer the ‘good’ war.