Introduction

Summary

My introduction offers an overview of the rise and fall of Gandhian passive resistance and places it in the context of a burgeoning arts movement both in India and concerned with India. It sketches the arc of the book, from Gandhi’s 1909 pronouncement of passive resistance to the play Tagore would soon write that takes up passivity as a form of unexpected resistance, to the role of the English language in Indian arts, and ends with the modernist memorial commissioned to commemorate the victims of India’s Partition. The introduction’s main work is to define its central concept, map its complications, and locate its role within a global arts movement.