India and the Caliphate

Imran Mulla is a UK-based journalist, who studied history at Cambridge, and the Indian Caliphate is his first book.

- SHYAM SARAN

It delves into a fascinating episode from 2oth century history, when wars, revolutions and social transformations shredded the age of empire and feudal hierarchies and brought a new landscape of independent, sovereign states. These new states had little patience with the vestiges of the old order, such as the princely states in India, and the cosmopolitanism of the interconnected elites, as comfortable in Paris as in the extravagant grace and refined culture of a Hyderabad or a Jaipur. The book throws light on what has become a forgotten chapter in the story of India’s struggle for independence, the tragedy of Partition and the challenge of upholding the rich plural heritage bequeathed by the millennia-old civilisation of India. The threads from that tumultuous period still link to and reverberate in India today.