REVIEW: How news media responded to India’s relationship with Britain

Abstract

Review of: Communications, Media and the Imperial Experience, by Chandrika Kaul. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 278 pp. ISBN 978-0-230-57258-4

Chandrika Kaul’s latest book begins and ends with what she regards as carefully stage-managed displays of British power designed to establish enduring images of imperial rule; in one, Indians and Britons bonded by their love of their King-Emperor and in the other, a noble, benevolent Britannia handing power to India as its civilising mission comes to a natural and peaceful end. Kaul, from St Andrews University in Scotland, has written or edited a number of books exploring imperial media systems and in this latest volume she explores how the media reacted to various stages in India’s relationship with Great Britain during the 20th century.