New Books In South Asian Studies

Rebels Against the Raj: Western Fighters for India’s Freedom (Knopf, 2022) by Ramachandra Guha tells the extraordinary but little-known story of seven individuals, foreigners to India, who chose to struggle for a country other than their own. These rebels and renegades arrived in colonial India through the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and joined the fight for Indian independence. Of the seven, four were British, two were American, and one was an Irishwoman. Four were men and three were women. Before and after being jailed or deported they did remarkable and pioneering work in a variety of fields: journalism, social reform, education, the emancipation of women, and environmentalism. Some of them lived and were active into the latter half of the twentieth century, many years after India’s independence. This book tells their stories, each rebel motivated by idealism and genuine sacrifice; each connected to Gandhi, though some as acolytes where others found endless infuriation in his views; each