Sources of Indian Traditions ― Modern India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh

For more than fifty years, students and teachers have made the two-volume resource Sources of Indian Traditions their first pick for an accessible yet thorough introduction to Indian and South Asian civilizations. Volume 2 contains an essential selection of primary readings on the social, intellectual, and religious history of India from the decline of Mughal rule in the eighteenth century to today. It details the advent of the East India Company, British colonization, the struggle for liberation, the partition of 1947, and the creation of Pakistan, Bangladesh, and contemporary India.

This third edition now begins earlier than the first and second, featuring a new chapter on eighteenth-century intellectual and religious trends that set the stage for India's modern development. The editors add new material on Gandhi and his reception both nationally and abroad and include different perspectives on and approaches to Partition and its aftermath. They expand their portrait of post-1947 India and Pakistan and add perspectives on Bangladesh. The collection is still divided thematically, with a section devoted to the drafting of the Indian constitution, the rise of nationalism, the influence of Western thought, the conflict in Kashmir, nuclear proliferation, minority religions, secularism, and the role of the Indian political Left. A phenomenal text, Sources of Indian Tradition is more indispensable than ever for courses in philosophy, religion, literature, and intellectual and cultural history.

Rachel Fell McDermott is professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College. A specialist in Bengali goddess worship, her books include Revelry, Rivalry, and Longing for the Goddesses of Bengal: The Fortunes of Hindu Festivals; Singing to the Goddess: Poems to Kali and Uma from Bengal, and Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams: Kali and Uma in the Devotional Poetry of Bengal.

Leonard A. Gordon is professor of history emeritus of the City University of New York and the author of Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Subhas and Sarat Chandra Bose and Bengal: The Nationalist Movement. He is also the director of the Taraknath Das Foundation.

Ainslie T. Embree is professor of history emeritus of Columbia University. Since his retirement, he has taught at Brown University and the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. He is the editor of Sources of Indian Tradition: From the Beginning to 1800, Volume 1, Second Edition.

Frances W. Pritchett is professor of modern Indic languages, Middle East, South Asian, and African studies at Columbia University. Her books include Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and Its Critics; The Romance Tradition in Urdu: Adventures from the Dastan of Amir Hamzah; and, with Khaliq Ahmad Khaliq, Urdu Meter: A Practical Handbook.

Dennis Dalton is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Barnard College. He is the author of Mahatma Gandhi: Nonviolent Power in Action and Indian Idea of Freedom: Political Thought of Swami Vivekananda, Aurobindo Ghose, Mahatma Gandhi, and Rabindranath Tagore, and is the editor of Mahatma Gandhi: Selected Political Writings.