From Raj to Republic

"A brilliantly original account of India's Partition. Refusing to confine Partition to the remaking of borders and religious identities, Purushotham places its violence alongside other conflicts to argue that independent India fashioned its sovereignty by their forcible assimilation into a nation that no longer owed its authority to the colonial state."—Faisal Devji, University of Oxford

"Purushotham vividly reconstructs the anguish and violence that preoccupied the early democratic republic as it emerged from under the debris of British imperial rule. This is a provocative and compelling new study of the chaotic history surrounding the reorganization of regional power and statehood in post-Partition India."—Sudipta Sen, University of California, Davis

"Throughout the book, Purushotham demonstrates that he is a skilled historian. His work is grounded in the archive, and he capitalises on the fact that files from the Ministry of States at the National Archives of India have been opened, providing a rich picture of political developments over the years of independence, partition and the integration of the princely states. In addition, he deploys materials from state archives, non-official institutions, newspapers, published reports and memoirs to good effect."—Taylor Sherman, H-Soz-Kult

"[A]n empirically and theoretically rich account of the constitutive role of violence in the forging of India's new republic. This book will be particularly useful for scholars interested in this period of South Asian history, and I would also enthusiastically recommend it to those concerned with theories and ideas of sovereignty, democracy, citizenship, and violence more generally."—Oliver Godsmark, Pacific Affairs