Srinath Raghavan

WW2 is curiously absent from any accounts of the freedom struggle except for the emergence of INA, and this book fills the gap of those 6 years leading to independence while not taking anything away from the Indian campaign in the allied camp.

A tremendous achievement chronicling in details the Indian campaigns in North Africa, Middle East, Burma and Malaya during WW2 from a fairly ancient, lacklustre and insufficiently armed garrison to a to well equipped army that proved its mettle across show more the British sphere of influence. An army that grew 50 folds and did away with “Churchill’s Martial Race Theory” through volunteer conscription and finally tilted the economics from India being a perpetually indebted nation to a net creditor while in turn made the British Raj impossible to sustain. A must read for anyone interested in the subject. show less

Divided in equal parts between straight-up military, political and socioeconomic concerns the author is essentially sorting out for himself a question that has been haunting him since he was an officer cadet in the Indian Army; just how does World War II relate to the fate of India? This is seeing that the great global conflict of 1937-45 tends to get marginalized in a society that is mostly concerned with events since the Great Partition, leading Raghavan to mount a general assessment of show more what it all meant. Of particular value is that Raghavan doesn't attempt to engage in a great deal of counter-factual history of how things might of worked out otherwise, staying very hard-headed about contemporary realities; that all leadership factions were taken aback by the violence of the Partition demonstrates the virtues of keeping analysis basic. That said, one does get some sense that the author looks at the acts of unreconstructed imperialists such as Prime Minister Churchill and Viceroy Linlithgow with a gimlet eye regarding men who helped to create a worst-case scenario with their divide-and-conquer mentality towards Indian politics. show less

a comprehensive history detailing India's crucial role in WWII. It explores how over 2.6 million Indian soldiers—the largest volunteer army in history—shaped global conflicts, while the war accelerated India's independence movement, transformed its economy, and reshaped the geopolitics of South Asia,