This chapter examines the goals and activities of the Calcutta-based Greater India Society (GIS). Building on Kalidas Nag and P.C. Bagchi’s study-sojourn in Paris and research trips to Leiden, the GIS became, in the mid-1920s, the South Asian node in the transimperial knowledge network of ‘Greater India’. The GIS set new terms for the writing of Indian history and popularized the notion of India as Asia’s civilizational fount and cultural linchpin, not only in Bengal but across the subcontinent. The Greater India movement endorsed a pedagogical mission to rectify the ‘splendid isolation’ myth, an important trope in British colonial histories of the subcontinent, and postulated India as a shaper of world history no less than the West and a prominent trading power, colonizer and civilizer in the Asian sphere. When the European powers gradually started losing grip on their colonies, the notion of ‘Greater India’ allowed Indian intellectuals to imagine an empire of their own. Although it was located in the distant past, it served the purposes of the present and the research paradigm of Greater India energized, in the Indian context, anti-colonial and nationalist agendas.

The introduction outlines, in broad brushstrokes, the different dimensions of the scholarly and nationalist quest to find India in Asia. In the 1920s and 1930s, Rabindranath Tagore and Greater India Society (GIS) members such as Kalidas Nag and Suniti Kumar Chatterjee toured Southeast Asia to look for ancient India’s Hindu-Buddhist cultural and artistic legacies abroad. But although this quest focused on Java, Bali and Cambodia, the GIS also charted India’s historical influence and cultural imprints in Central and East Asia, as well as Europe, the Pacific world and Indian Ocean realm. Drawing on the travelogues of GIS members and figures loosely affiliated with the society such as the Bengali sannyasin Swami Sadananda, this introduction explores the interwar politics of Greater India. It is argued that the Greater India movement’s quest to rewrite ancient history reconfigured the “idea of India” and became central to anti-colonial, nationalist and internationalist political agendas. Finally, the introduction reflects on the language dynamics of the knowledge networks of Greater India, and outlines the main methodological and historiographical stakes of the book.

Chapter 2 relies on unique access to Mujuru’s family members to make known his traumatic and nomadic upbringing. The chapter traces the roots of Mujuru’s nationalist political consciousness, which saw him leave Rhodesia for Zambia in 1967 to join the liberation struggle with ZAPU. It argues that some of Mujuru’s character and political perceptions were shaped by his time in 1960s Bulawayo, an urban site of colonial oppression and home to a vibrant cultural life. The chapter also argues that there are some pointers to the future from Mujuru’s upbringing, namely his great courage, proximity to violence and continual displacement. Lastly, the chapter details Mujuru’s military training in ZAPU and the reasons for and nature of his defection to ZANLA in 1971.