1st Edition
Shyamji Krishnavarma Sanskrit, Sociology and Anti-Imperialism
This book is the first critical biography on Shyamji Krishnavarma — scholar, journalist and national revolutionary who lived in exile outside India from 1897 to 1930. His ideas were crucial in the creation of an extremist wing of anti-imperial nationalism.
The work delves into a fascinating range of issues such as colonialism and knowledge, political violence, cosmopolitanism, and diaspora. Lucidly written, and with an insightful analysis of Krishnavarma’s life and times, this will greatly interest scholars and researchers of modern Indian history, politics, the nationalist movement, as well as the informed lay reader.
Plates. Abbreviations. Glossary. Acknowledgements. Introduction. 1. Knowledge 2. Cosmopolitanism 3. Violence 4. Conclusion and Epilogue. Bibliography. About the Author. Index
Biography
Harald Fischer-Tiné is Professor of Modern Global History, ETH Zürich.
‘[An] outstanding and compelling study of the nationalist and revolutionary Shyamji Krishnavarma [that] throws much light on a critical phase of Indian nationalism when [. . .] Indian liberalism was transformed into radicalism and then violent anti-colonialism.’ — C. A. Bayly, University of Cambridge, UK
‘[The] book restores debates about the utility of violence to the historiography of Indian nationalist thought [. . .] problematising the binaries of east and west, cosmopolitanism and nationalism, that have ordered recent histories of transnational networks.’ — Kama Maclean, University of New South Wales, Australia
‘Fischer-Tiné paints a compelling portrait of Krishnavarma — intellectual, exile, nationalist revolutionary.’ — David Arnold, University of Warwick, UK
Harald Fischer-Tiné's book is worth reading for many reasons. It is not only giving back a long time forgotten intellectual and revolutionary his historical role, thereby saving him from 'safronisation'. It also widens the understanding of the many facets of the international anti-colonial struggle in the decades before the Great War, at the same time emphasizing its many limitations. — Amit Das Gupta
