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Podcast: Exchanges: A Cambridge UP Podcast
Episode: Durba Ghosh, "Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947" (Cambridge UP, 2017)
Description: Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947Â (Cambridge University Press, 2017) by Durba Ghosh uncovers the critical place of revolutionary terrorism in the colonial and postcolonial history of modern India. The book reveals how so-called 'Bhadralok dacoits' used assassinations, bomb attacks, and armed robberies to accelerate the departure of the British from India and how, in response, the colonial government effectively declared a state of emergency, suspending the rule of law and detaining hundreds of suspected terrorists. Ghosh charts how each measure of constitutional reform to expand Indian representation in 1919 and 1935 was accompanied by emergency legislation t...