India At War

The Subcontinent and the Second World War

Yasmin Khan

An engaging narrative told through the voices of Indians and Europeans, drawn from interviews, newspapers and archival material
India's critical role in World War II, remarkably under-studied, finally receives the attention it deserves
Focuses on a variety of characters, from soldiers serving abroad to those at home engaged in the wider war effort

India At War

The Subcontinent and the Second World War

Yasmin Khan

Description

World War II was a global catastrophe. Far broader than just the critical struggle between Allies and Axis, its ramifications were felt throughout the world. It was a time of social relocation, reorienting ideas of patriotism and geographical attachment, and forcing the movement of people across oceans and continents. In India at War, Yasmin Khan offers an account of India's role in the conflict, one that takes into consideration the social, economic, and cultural changes that occurred in South Asia between 1939 and 1945-and reveals how vital the Commonwealth's contribution was to the war effort.

Khan's sweeping work centers on the lives of ordinary Indian people, exploring the ways they were affected by a cataclysmic war with origins far beyond Indian shores. In manpower alone, India's contribution was staggering; it produced the largest volunteer army in world history, with 2.5 million men. Indians were engaged in making the raw materials and food stuffs needed by the Allies, and became involved in the construction of airstrips, barracks, hospitals, internee camps, roads and railways. Their lives were also profoundly affected by the presence of the large Allied army in the region, including not only British but American, African, and Chinese troops. Madras was bombed by the Japanese and the Andaman and Nicobar Islands were occupied, while the Bengal famine of 1943-in which perhaps three million Bengalis died-was a man-made disaster precipitated by the effects of the war.

This authoritative account offers a critically important look at the contributions of colonial manpower and resources essential to sustaining the war, and emphasizes the significant ways in which the conflict shaped modern India.

India At War

The Subcontinent and the Second World War

Yasmin Khan

Prologue

1. An Empire Committed

2. Peasants into Soldiers

3. Into the Middle East and North Africa

4. Free and Willing Human Beings

5. Not a Paisa, Not a Man

6. Bombed to Hell

7. Money Coming, Money Coming

8. An Empire Exposed

9. Urban Panic

10. The World at the Door

11. Thirty Months Too Late

12. Welcome to Bombay

13. Plantations and Paddyfields

14. Living Dangerously

15. Scorched Earth

16. The Cogs in a Watch

17. Longing and Loss

18. Catalyst of Change

19. Man-a-Mile Road

20. Insults and Discriminations

21. Empires, Lost and Found

22. Celebrations and Recriminations

23. The Sepoy's Return

Chronology of Major Events
List of Illustrations
List of Maps
List of Abbreviations
Glossary
Note on Sources
Acknowledgements
Endnotes
Bibliography
Index

India At War

The Subcontinent and the Second World War

Yasmin Khan

Author Information

Yasmin Khan 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 for History from the Royal Historical Society.

India At War

The Subcontinent and the Second World War

Yasmin Khan

Reviews and Awards

"[T]his is an important work for any serious student of the Second World War, the last days of the Raj, and modern South Asia."--The NYMAS Review

"Superlative...India at War breaks new ground on almost every page...Written in beautifully polished and often moving prose, Khan's book is the first detailed study. It succeeds brilliantly...Her work has the detailed research, economic rigour and theoretical superstructure of heavyweight academic history; yet it also has the narrative momentum, prose style and humanistic and biographical insights of a more literary work." --William Dalrymple, Spectator

"Wonderfully detailed and original...Khan achieves almost complete success: India at War is a striking example of people's history, packed with anecdotes, memories and information about a shared but largely unwritten global past." --The Guardian

"Khan...balances analysis, history and human compassion in a narrative that leaves one shaken." --Daily Telegraph

"Splendid.... Khan's richly readable book takes apart and rewrites the conventional narratives of imperial historians.... Democratic in her approach and largely suspicious of grand narratives, Khan tells her stories from the ground upwards.... [H]er chronicle is, in the main, tragic in this seminal and timely book." --The Independent

"[Khan's] new work makes salutary but unpalatable fare for any remotely sensitive modern British reader.... [Khan] tells a host of stories about India's wartime travails that should be known to a wider western audience." --Max Hastings, Sunday Times

"The value of Yasmin Khan's fine book is to tell us something of what the war did to India...." --Financial Times

"This is a much-needed general treatment of the Indian Empire's last war."--Choice

"India at War is a careful and nuanced work of history."-Manu Bhagavan, H-Net

". . . An engrossing and fluently written social history that crosses lines of gender, region and class, public and private. [Ms. Khan] shows us India's war through the eyes of peasant women waiting for soldiers on far-flung battlefields, heroic winners of the Victoria Cross, enragé young British civil servants, legendary political activists, nurses, refugees and impatient young socialites confined to the Hill Station of Simla. In reconstructing this mass of stories Ms. Khan greatly enriches our stock of testimony through which to understand this vast struggle." --The Wall Street Journal