How Indian troops processed WW

The Second World War, though not an Indian war and not fought on Indian soil, was nonetheless a transformative moment in 20th century India. It reshaped not just the economy and polity, but the psychic universe of millions of Indians. It stamped its mark on their emotional lives, creating fear, uncertainty, anxieties, loss and longing. Diya Gupta’s book is quite unusual in that it is not so much about the war per se, as about how people experienced it and the whole range of emotions it evoked in them.

The theme of emotions is rather new in history writing. Emotions are increasingly being seen as exogenous rather than endogenous. They do not always spring from the depths of human heart but rather a whole range of external factors. On this understanding, emotions need to be seen as social r