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 is an exploration of the rich, variegated, and intimate history of revolution as praxis.

About the Author
Aparna Vaidik is Associate Professor of History at Ashoka University, India. Previously she was at Georgetown University, Washington DC and University of Delhi. She is a historian of South Asia who has extensively written on history of penal settlements, island histories, the Indian Ocean, politics of violence and the Indian revolutionaries. Imperial Andamans: Colonial Encounter and Island History (2010) is her first monograph, and her most recent publication is a creative non-fiction titled My Son's Inheritance: A Secret History of Lynching and Blood Justice in India (2020). Her book Revolutionaries on Trial: Sedition, Betrayal and Martyrdom is forthcoming.


Book Information
ISBN 9781108838085
Author Aparna Vaidik
Format Hardback
Page Count 240
Imprint Cambridge University Press
Publisher Cambridge University Press
Weight(grams) 450g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 160mm * 20mm