Böcker av Aparna Vaidik

Set in British India of the 1920s, Waiting for Swaraj follows the cadence and tempo of the lives of the intrepid revolutionaries of the Hindustan Republican Association and the Hindustan Republican Socialist Association who challenged the British Raj. It seeks to comprehend the revolutionaries' self-conception - what did it mean to be a revolutionary? How did a revolutionary live out the vision of revolution, what was their everyday like, did life in revolution transform an individual, what was their truth and how was it different from that of the others? The book locates the essence of being a revolutionary not just in the spectacular moments when the revolutionaries threw a bomb or carried out a political assassination, but in the everyday conversations, banter, anecdotes, and in the stray fragments of the life in underground. It demonstrates how 'waiting' was the crucible that forged a revolutionary.

This book traverses the Indian Ocean in the period when the British held sway over the major oceanic waters of the world. In reviving the history of the Andamans as an important imperial prize, it offers a fresh perspective on the history of British colonialism, nationalism and the creation of modern India from its geographic periphery.