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Lookup NU author(s): Dr Manu Sehgal, Dr Samiksha Sehrawat
This is the authors' accepted manuscript of an article that has been published in its final definitive form by Cambridge University Press, 2020.
For re-use rights please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.
By providing the first comprehensive account of the role of the British and Indian press in war propaganda, this article makes an intervention in the global history of the First World War. The positive propaganda early in the war interlaced with a rhetoric of loyalism was in contrast with how the conservative British press affixed blame for military defeats in Mesopotamia upon the colonial regime’s failure to effectively mobilize India’s resources. Using a highly emotive and enduring trope of the ‘Mesopotamia muddle’, the Northcliffe press was successful in channeling a high degree of public scrutiny onto the campaign. The effectiveness of this criticism ensured that debates about the Mesopotamian debacle became a vehicle for registering criticism of structures of colonial rule and control in India. On the one hand this critique hastened constitutional reforms and devolution in colonial India, on the other it led to the demand that the inadequacy of India’s contribution to the war be remedied by raising war loans. Both the colonial government and its nationalist critics were briefly and paradoxically united in opposing these demands. The coercive extraction of funds for the imperial war effort as well as the British press’s vituperative criticism contributed to a postwar anti-colonial political upsurge. The procedure of creating a colonial ‘scandal’ out of a military disaster required a specific politics for assessing the regulated flows of information which proved to be highly effective in shaping both the enquiry that followed and the politics of interwar colonial South Asia.
Author(s): Sehgal M, Sehrawat S
Publication type: Article
Publication status: Published
Journal: Modern Asian Studies
Year: 2020
Volume: 54
Issue: 5
Pages: 1395-1445
Print publication date: 01/09/2020
Online publication date: 24/10/2019
Acceptance date: 22/09/2016
Date deposited: 19/05/2017
ISSN (print): 0026-749X
ISSN (electronic): 1469-8099
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X18000215
DOI: 10.1017/S0026749X18000215
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