There is a very nice book on the celebrated "Bhawal sanyasi," an ''imposter'', who was finally declared genuine by the final court of appeal in British India - the Privy Council. Book - ''A princely imposter? The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal'', by Partha Chatterjee, April 2002, Princeton University Press, ISBN: 0-691-09031-9, Price US$19.95, pp 429. An excellent review of the book is at http://www.shailaja.net/imposter.htm The reviewer raises a good question, that is, why would the choice of a domestic oppressor over a foreign one amount to a secret history of India's nationalist movement. --- Harshawardhan_Bosham Nimkhedkar Some snippets from the review: Visiting professor of anthropology at Columbia University Partha Chatterjee's book about the case, A Princely Imposter?, proves that history can be more compelling than fiction. In essence, this is a mystery that - as the question mark in the book's title of the book indicates - even Chatterjee cannot solve. Like a good mystery novel, the book is a gripping read, racy and full of suspense. Chatterjee recreates the Bengal of the mid 20th century with Dickensian flair. But this is also a serious work of history. Without ever losing his grip on the taut narrative, Chatterjee uses the case to discuss the issues of nationalism, gender, caste and colonial oppression. He argues that the Bhawal sanyasi became a "focus of anti-colonial sentiments" and claims that the case reveals the "secret history of Indian nationalism". Anti-colonial sentiment gained strength during the protracted legal battle, Chatterjee writes, so that by 1946 India wasn't the acquiescing colony it was in 1921. Educated, middle-class Indians now held important positions in the judiciary. According to the author, "... there is no mistaking the nationalist location of the legal-political thinking" of the two Indian judges who were instrumental in declaring the sanyasi as the bona fide prince. "[The judges] represented the generation of Indians who had discursively, ideologically, often institutionally prepared themselves for a transfer of power." And, since the British government claimed the sanyasi was an imposter, the Indian judges' verdict was an act of nationalist self-assertion. What better way to cock a snook at their colonizers? The local British received another slap in the face when on appeal the London Privy Council, the final arbiter for the case, upheld the Indian judgment. The decision sent a signal that Britain had begun to believe that Indian affairs were now best left to the judgment of Indians, Chatterjee argues. Though the possibility of a tacit conspiracy of "secret" nationalism in the Indian courts is intriguing, Chatterjee leaves too many questions unanswered. Why would men whom Chatterjee describes as "stalwarts among nationalist lawyers" defend a debauched feudal lord who represented an exploitive system the nationalist movement abhorred? The prince had not been an exemplary human being. As an affluent zamindar (landowner), he had taken a child bride and devoted his life to hunting and womanizing, rather than the improvement of his estate - much less the lot of its tenants. Far from being ignorant of his decadent life, these stalwart nationalists called the prince's old mistresses to the stand to prove that he suffered from syphilis. In the final analysis, Chatterjee doesn't supply enough convincing reasons to explain why the choice of a domestic oppressor over a foreign one amounts to a secret history of India's nationalist movement. -----------------