Description
Book SynopsisV.S. Srinivasa Sastri was a celebrated Indian politician and diplomat in the early twentieth century. Despite being hailed as the ‘very voice of international conscience’, he is now a largely forgotten figure. This book rehabilitates Sastri and offers a diplomatic biography of his years as India’s roving ambassador in the 1920s. It examines his involvement in key conferences and agreements, as well as his achievements in advocating for racial equality and securing the rights of Indians both at home and abroad. It also illuminates the darker side of being a native diplomat, including the risk of legitimizing the colonial project and the contradictions of being treated as an equal on the world stage while lacking equality at home. In retrieving the legacy of Sastri, the book shows that liberal internationalism is not the preserve of western powers and actors – where it too often represents imperialism by other means – but a commitment to social progress fought at multiple sites and by many protagonists.
Trade Review“By bringing out critiques of Sastri from within his contemporaries – Congress statesmen and India’s leading political thinkers – the book succeeds in decolonising pre-independence Indian diplomacy, thus far, a field too deeply entrenched in India’s colonial past.” H-Soz-Kult "[A] most enjoyable treasure box of a book… [this] well-researched and elegantly written monograph covers everything in terms of Sastri's political life" - Amit Das Gupta, Sehepunkte
"Dr Vineet Thakur’s latest book is an important and exciting contribution to our understanding of race and the global colour line in the British imperial world of the 1920s." LSE Review of Books
“Vineet Thakur’s biographical study of Sastri, India’s First Diplomat, is therefore a refreshing correction to such historiography. While acknowledging the shrinking domestic political space in which liberals operated in the interwar period, Thakur highlights the very real contributions they made in the diplomatic sphere.” The India Forum
Table of ContentsIntroduction: The Native Diplomat Shirtless Srinivasan A Worthy Successor to Gokhale The Silver-Tongued Orator The Most Picturesque Figure A Rather Dangerous Ambassador Like the Anger of Rudra An Honourable Compromise A Trustee of India’s Honour We Have No Sastri Conclusion: An Amiable Usurper
