The Mortal God

Milinda Banerjee teaches at the Department of History, Presidency University, Kolkata and is a Research Fellow at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, Germany. He has co-edited Transnational Histories of the 'Royal Nation' (2017), and is the author of two monographs as well as several journal articles and book chapters on the intersections of South Asian and transregional intellectual history.

'This is a book of exceptional quality, range and interest, exploring the complex and protean questions of sovereignty, rulership and kingship in nineteenth- and twentieth-century India. British proconsuls, administrators and intellectuals, the ruling princes, South Asian nationalists, lower caste communities, and the messianic politics which linked elite nationalism and popular protest, all engaged with these issues, and from many different perspectives. This deeply researched and beautifully constructed book is a significant contribution to the political and intellectual history of South Asia during the time of British imperial rule, which also sets these still resonant and unresolved issues in a much broader and necessary global context.' David Cannadine, Princeton University, New Jersey

• Acknowledgements; Note on transliteration; Abbreviations; Note on documents used; Introduction; 1. 'Caesar of India': debating the British monarchy and colonial rulership; 2. State is the household vastly enlarged: imagining sovereignty through the princely states; 3. 'One law, one nation, one throne': debating national unity; 4. 'One has to rule oneself': collectivising sovereignty in peasant politics; 5. 'God's kingdom has come': messianic sovereignty in late colonial India; Conclusions and further thoughts; Index.