Revisiting the political and economic history of India’s early transition from colony to nation-state, Sherman critiques other scholars from several disciplines for attributing dominant leadership to Prime Minister (and leader of the Congress Party) Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964). She also identifies and debunks what she asserts are seven prominent “myths” about India during this period—that it was nonaligned, secular, socialist, strongly centralized, democratic, and emulative of high Westernized modernism. While she repeatedly recounts the virtues of archival research into primary documents in order to identify actual administrative practices that undercut superficial policy pronouncements, almost all of her own reference notes in this book are to published secondary sources, newspapers, or collected works.
In making her suggestive arguments, Sherman highlights Nehru not as “The Architect” but rather as only a “patron, mediator, educator, and symbol” (207). Although Sherman demarcates the period addressed in her book (1947–1968) by Nehru’s years as prime minister,...