Raj Syndrome : A Study in Imperial Perceptions

This book seeks to appreciate the trends of imperial perceptions of India and her institutions. Thematically, the drift and propensities of imperial perceptions etched out here are valid for the whole period of Raj which was initiated with the assumption of authority by the British crown from the East India Company. The book attempts to capture the broad parameters and intricate detours of imperial perceptions of India especially since the over-confident days of the adolescent Raj in the mid-seventies of the nineteenth century. Economic power, military authority and diplomatic ascendancy of the empire were sustained by the centrality of Raj in British imperial psychology. British sensibility with regard to the Raj displayed an arrogant and an authoritarian programme, quite different from the fraternal fellow-feelings which were displayed towards Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Rhodesia. The primary object of the work is to weave a pattern and discover a meaning in imperial sensibility.