31 December 2013
Early Southeast Asia Viewed from India: An Anthology of Articles from the Journal of the Greater India Society
“The present anthology of selected articles from the eighteen volumes of the Journal of the Greater India Society is a long overdue publication. The comprehensive Foreword and Introduction by its editor Kwa Chong-Guan provide an excellent critical analysis of the aims and history of the Greater India Society, inaugurated at Calcutta in 1926, and of its journal, published from 1936 to 1959. While the JGIS has been criticized for having also become an organ of Indian nationalist attempts at the height of the Indian independence movement, it contained a considerable number of historiographically still relevant articles, such as those by D.C. Sircar and H.B. Sarkar. It also constitutes, as rightly pointed out by the Editor, an important historical document “of India’s understanding of its historical destiny as it once again ‘Look East’.”
—Hermann Kulke, Kiel University, Germany
“The present anthology of selected articles from the eighteen volumes of the Journal of the Greater India Society is a long overdue publication. The comprehensive Foreword and Introduction by its editor Kwa Chong-Guan provide an excellent critical analysis of the aims and history of the Greater India Society, inaugurated at Calcutta in 1926, and of its journal, published from 1936 to 1959. While the JGIS has been criticized for having also become an organ of Indian nationalist attempts at the height of the Indian independence movement, it contained a considerable number of historiographically still relevant articles, such as those by D.C. Sircar and H.B. Sarkar. It also constitutes, as rightly pointed out by the Editor, an important historical document “of India’s understanding of its historical destiny as it once again ‘Look East’.”
—Hermann Kulke, Kiel University, Germany
