About this talk

The historiography of the Indian freedom movement has long been shaped by a nation-state framework that explains the rise of anticolonial politics primarily through developments within the territorial boundaries of British India. Drawing on research from my recently published book Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road to Freedom that offers a new global perspective on modern Indian history, I argue in this talk that it was the rise of a discourse of Asianism in the early twentieth century that served as the primary driving force behind anticolonial resistance in India. In contrast to existing historiography, this transnational approach ties together into a single narrative what has been seen as two conflicting forms of anticolonialism: nonviolent resistance under Gandhi and the militant movement culminating in the Indian National Army under Bose. Asia emerges in this retelling not as an inert geographical category, but instead as a singular agent of change in modern world history. Dr. Mithi Mukherjee is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Born and raised in India, she has a Ph. D. in History from the University of Chicago. Professor Mukherjee researches and teaches on the legal, political, and intellectual history of modern India and the British Empire, the history of human rights, Gandhian thought, and comparative constitutional history. She is the author of India in the Shadows of Empire: A Legal and Political History (1774-1950) published by Oxford University Press in 2010. Her recent book Asianism and the Fall of Empire: India's Road ot Freedom was published by the University of California Press in March 2026.

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