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The Raj At War

The Raj At War

A People’s History of India’s Second World War

Yasmin Khan
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Two and a half million Indians volunteered in the Second World War. Their stories had been lost and silenced, until now.
Award-winning historian Yasmin Khan marshals interviews, newspaper reports and unseen archival material to tell the forgotten story of India’s role in the Second World War. We meet soldiers, sailors and non-combatants prostitutes, nurses, cooks, peasants—whose lives were upended by a war far, far away. From a small Muslim boy arrested for singing anti-recruitment songs, to cooks preparing chapattis on army boats, to a family listening to illicit German radio broadcasts, and a love letter from the first Indian soldier to receive the Victoria Cross, Khan makes us feel and hear the lost voices of a people involved in a war that wasn’t of their choosing.
Dramatizing a cataclysm that transformed the subcontinent and led to its independence, The Raj at War undeniably inserts South Asia back into WWII history and confirms that the Empire—and all its subjects—formed both the heart and limbs of Britain’s war effort and eventual victory.

Imprint: Vintage Books

Published: Jul/2015

ISBN: 9780143427575

Length : 440 Pages

MRP : ₹699.00

The Raj At War

A People’s History of India’s Second World War

Yasmin Khan

Two and a half million Indians volunteered in the Second World War. Their stories had been lost and silenced, until now.
Award-winning historian Yasmin Khan marshals interviews, newspaper reports and unseen archival material to tell the forgotten story of India’s role in the Second World War. We meet soldiers, sailors and non-combatants prostitutes, nurses, cooks, peasants—whose lives were upended by a war far, far away. From a small Muslim boy arrested for singing anti-recruitment songs, to cooks preparing chapattis on army boats, to a family listening to illicit German radio broadcasts, and a love letter from the first Indian soldier to receive the Victoria Cross, Khan makes us feel and hear the lost voices of a people involved in a war that wasn’t of their choosing.
Dramatizing a cataclysm that transformed the subcontinent and led to its independence, The Raj at War undeniably inserts South Asia back into WWII history and confirms that the Empire—and all its subjects—formed both the heart and limbs of Britain’s war effort and eventual victory.

Buying Options
Paperback / Hardback
Ebooks

Yasmin Khan

Yasmin Khan is a British writer and historian. She is an associate professor of history at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Kellogg College. Her first book, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan won the Gladstone Prize from the Royal Historical Society in 2007 and was longlisted for the Orwell Prize in 2008.

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