An innovative book about the relationship between South Africa and India
South Africa's future is increasingly tied up with that of India. While trade and investment between the two countries is intensifying, they share long-standing historical ties and have much in common: apart from cricket, colonialism and Gandhi, both countries are important players in the global South. As India emerges as a major economic power, the need to understand these links becomes ever more pressing. Can the two countries enter balanced forms of exchange? What forms of transnational political community between these two regions have yet to be researched and understood? The first section of South Africa and India traces the range of historical connection between the two countries. The second section explores unconventional comparisons that offer rich ground on which to build original areas of study. This innovative book looks to a post-American world in which the global South will become ever more important. Within this context, the Indian Ocean arena itself and South Africa and India in particular move to the fore. The book's main contribution lies in the approaches and methods offered by its wide range of contributors for thinking about this set of circumstances.

... makes a significant and innovative contribution by establishing a new field of research. -Preben Kaarsholm, Roskilde University, Denmark In recent years, relations between South Africa and India have burgeoned in bilateral and multilateral contexts, but comparative analyses of their histories, visions and developmental trajectories have barely started. ... Hofmeyr and Williams have assembled an impressive interdisciplinary group of scholars to lend insights into various historical and contemporary facets of India-South Africa relations in ways that enrich the comparative enterprise. -Gilbert M. Khadiagala. University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg

Isabel Hofmeyr is Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.

Michelle Williams is an editor and an associate professor of sociology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Her books include Labour in the Global South: Challenges and Alternatives for Workers; The Roots of Participatory Democracy: Democratic Communists in South Africa and Kerala, India; and South Africa and India: Shaping the Global South.