The Vanishing Indian Upper Class : Life History of Raza Mohammed Khan

The Vanishing Indian Upper Class is based on a life-narrative [true-life story] and contains various elements of history, politics, religion, literature and poetry. In anonymized form it dramatizes a personal family history focused around a continuing and unresolved family inheritance and property dispute, which provides the story with its dramatic tension. The main subjects in the narrative which speaks beyond the life story itself are: the human spirit; honor; betrayal; violence; love; politics; and those bonds beyond kith and kin known as comradeship and engagement. The work covers two continents involving the Indian upper class and describes how Raza Mohammed Khan and his family legacy is revealed.

This book itemize the familial, cultural, religious, and historical themes in a unique life story. The book is distinctive in that it continues the life story as a sociological genre, and as a methodological construct [it] attempts the comprehensive life story which engages the totality of a person’s life by capturing the essence and the development of a peerless human being. Though there are questions whether it is possible to arrange the totality of a life, an important part of the legacy at the moment comes in various forms, including biographies, video diaries, autobiographies, home web pages, and journals, but I realize all life stories are constructed and partial, yet, the attempt here is to tell a story of a member of the ruling elite rarely told. This book is part of a series about cosmopolitan life and no better way to serve that purpose than to use the life story as part of that tradition.