Making of a Nation

Ravinder Kumar was a social historian with a scholarly interest in modern and contemporary India. He was Director of the Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, New Delhi. Prior to this, he was Professor of History at the University of Allahabad and at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. His published works include: Western India in the Nineteenth Century (1965); (ed.) Essays in Gandhian Politics (1971); Essays in the Social History of Modern India (1983); (ed.) Philosophical Theory and Social Reality (1984). He also published essays in scholarly journals in India and overseas.

• Preface vii Acknowledgements ix 1. From Swaraj to Puma Swaraj: A Review of the Nationalist Struggle in the 1920s and the 1930s 1 2. A Review of the Historical Literature on the Struggle for Freedom in India 59 3. Motilal Nehru: Portrait of a Nationalist 79 4. Gandhi, Ambedkar and the Poona Pact, 1932 136 5. The Role of Urban Society in Nationalist Politics 160 6. The Secular Culture of India 1747. The Past as a Mirror of the Future 194 8. Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian National Congress and the Anti-Fascist Struggle (1939-1945) 209 9. The Historical Roots of Democracy in India 229 10. The Place of Oral Sources in Historical Research 245