Vishnu's Crowded Temple: India since the Great Rebellion. By Maria Misra. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2008. xxxiii, 535 pp. $35.00 (cloth) (original) (raw)

2009, The Journal of Asian Studies

This book is an engagingly written, chronologically ordered history of India from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. It depicts modern Indian society as structured by its responses to colonial initiatives but sadly unable to attain that perfect civic inclusion exemplified by the West because of Indians' obstinate retention of notions of hierarchy and difference (pp. xxv-vi). Chapter 1 surveys the nineteenth century and concludes that British stereotypes shaped Indian self-perceptions: "No sooner had the British proposed that that a type existed than the 'type' sprang forth" (p. 41). The second chapter describes this process as resulting in fragmentation and antagonism, "just as the idea of a unified Indian nationalist movement made its debut in the form of the Indian National Congress, the putative nation was splitting into fragments" (p. 48). The nationalist movement only gained momentum when it was able to yoke constitutional politics to Hindu revivalism (p. 74). Strangely enough, "in its earliest days, the prospects for Hindu-Muslim unity in Congress were rather promising" (p. 79). This, however, fell apart as the British exploited the rise of Hindu revivalism and pan-Islamism. They also used emerging caste conflicts to their own advantage. They did "not conjure these proliferating divisions and identities from thin air, [but] they waved a magic wand that would entrench and institutionalize them" (p. 90). Chapter 3 describes the effect of World War I, the advent of Gandhi, constitutional changes, and the new competitive politics of the 1920s and 1930s, including the confrontations that characterized the Round Table conferences (1930-31), the provisions of the 1935 act, and so on-using the cutesy metaphor of a cricket game with British umpires: "Indians would form teams; Muslims, non-Brahmans, Princes and Nationalists would take to the field umpired by the Raj" (p. 135). This segues into chapter 4, which describes the rise of the Gandhi-led Congress to political dominance in the late 1930s. Maria Misra describes Gandhi's utopian vision but adds that his ideas found limited support among the intelligentsia, which now included a "fascist-style Hindu radical right," a "communist-inspired left," and the "Colombia PhD" B. R. Ambedkar (pp. 169, 181). The Congress dominated the 1937 elections, but Muslims, regional parties, and low castes (Misra believes) remained alienated from