The Rudolphs' analysis reveals that Gandhi's charisma was deeply rooted in the aspects of Indian tradition that he interpreted for his time. They key to his political influence was his ability to realize in both his daily life and his public actions, cultural ideals that many Indians honored but could not enact themselves--ideals such as the traditional Hindu belief that a person's capacity for self-control enhances his capacity to control his environment. Appealing to shared expectations and recognitions, Gandhi was able to revitalize tradition while simultaneously breaking with some of its entrenched values, practices, and interests. One result was a self-critical, ethical, and inclusive nationalist movement that eventually led to independence.

Stressing the variations in meaning of modernity and tradition, this work shows how in India traditional structures and norms have been adapted or transformed to serve the needs of a modernizing society. The persistence of traditional features within modernity, it suggests, answers a need of the human condition.
Three areas of Indian life are analyzed: social stratification, charismatic leadership, and law. The authors question whether objective historical conditions, such as advanced industrialization, urbanization, or literacy, are requisites for political modernization.

The fascination of Colonel James Tod, one of the earliest colonial ethnographers, with the cultural practices, communities and histories of the people of Rajasthan led to a meticulous compilation of information about the region and its people, whom he deeply admired. His two-volume masterwork, Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan, published in London in 1829 and 1832, inspired generations of popular renderings of the past, including nationalist and vernacular imaginations in the whole of South Asia. Tod's narrative style reflects the influence of Romanticism, medieval feudalism, and civilizational progress starkly at variance with the official colonial view of the pre-British past of India. What was the source of this 'romanticism' of Colonel Tod? Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph contextualize the formation of Tod's ideas and their reception through documents written by or to Tod, which help in situating and contextualizing his life work. Interestingly, the second part of the book collects the exchange between Tod and James Mill in the British parliament over the administration of British territories in India with Rajputana as a case study. This book thus significantly contributes to the exploration of knowledge-formation in colonial India and its contemporary influence.