The United States of India

Anticolonial Literature and Transnational Refraction

"In this era, Desai's...book (is) not just (an) inadvertently timely intervention in the sociology of race, but also in academia more generally. (It) show(s) the necessity that our work is engaged with the world we are studying, in the hope that we can collectively make a better world for all."
— Ethnicities

“ A fascinating study, at once rigorously theoretical and appealingly anecdotal, that adds to and reshapes the growing field of South Asian American Studies. Cogent and well-organized, The United States of India exhibits a truly interdisciplinary scope, encompassing insights from literary studies, visual culture, legal history, and postcolonial theory.”—Dohra Ahmad, Professor of English at St. John’s University and editor of The Penguin Book of Migration Literature

“ Manan Desai has written a much needed textual analysis of some of the seminal texts of early South Asian American history. An important contribution that asks us to consider how America’s promises and limitations can be revealed and interrogated through the anticolonial struggles that animated this historical period.”—Seema Sohi, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder and author of Echoes of Mutiny: Race, Surveillance, and Indian Anticolonialism in North America

" Desai’s book is grounded in archival research.... It is enhanced by visual anecdotes that effectively situate the reader in the early-twentieth century cross-cultural encounter between India and the United States. His criticism is nuanced, measured, and self-reflexive.... Desai’s work is timely and unflinchingly, albeit implicitly, sheds light on historical crossfires in relation to those of our time."
— Journal of Asian American Studies

" (A)ccessible and compelling, The United States of India is a valuable resource for scholars of American, ethnic American, Asian American, South Asian, postcolonial and global studies.”
—South Asian Review