The National Movement
December 2018
5.5 x 8.5 inches
(viii+120) 128 pages
ISBN : 978-81-89487-79-9
This volume consists of five essays on the National Movement that arose to overthrow the British rule in India. Three of these essays are devoted to the two men, Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, whose divergent ideas dominated the National Movement and to different degrees influenced its course. The fourth essay studies in detail how ideas and practice enmeshed to produce the Civil Disobedience Movement in its initial phase, 1930-31, being undoubtedly the most powerful mass agitation organized by the Congress. The final essay studies the contributions made by the Left, especially the Communists, to the National Movement, seeking to fill a gap quite often found in conventional histories.
“Habib writes with fluency, able to discriminate the shifts in the thoughts of these actors. For example, in relation to the relative priority of nationalism versus internationalism in Nehru’s case, or the use of state-enforcement of equality versus a more personally enacted ‘heart-based’ appeal in the case of Gandhi- he shows how reluctantly Gandhi acceded to state intervention.”
Nikhil Govind, The Book Review