Dr Alka Pande is an art critic, cultural theorist, curator and lecturer who has published extensively on Indian art, aesthetics and visual cultures. An alumnus of Punjab University, Dr Pande completed her postdoctoral research in critical art theory at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is presently curator of the Visual Arts Gallery at the India Habitat Centre, New Delhi. Dr Pande was made a 'Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres' in 2006 in recognition of her significant contributions to the fields of art and literature. Aditi Anand (no relation to the subject) is a writer and trained lawyer. Her professional interest lies in contributing to the genres of both historical biography and narrative non-fiction as part of a cultural retelling of significant historical and contemporary events. She is currently researching a legal biography based on the life of an eminent jurist. Dr Grant Pooke is a senior lecturer in art history at the University of Kent, UK. His research interests cover Cold War visual cultures, Marxist art histories and aspects of contemporary art. His publications include Francis Klingender: A Marxist Art Historian Out of Time (2008), Contemporary British Art: An Introduction (2011) and Fifty Key Texts in Art History (co-editor, 2012).

A trenchant critic of both British imperialism and Indian militarism, Brij Mohan Anand's highly politicised aesthetic tracked India's emergence from Partition, Independence and its journey through the technological challenges of the Cold War and the complex modernity of the later twentieth century. B.M. Anand (1928-1986), an accomplished and principally self-taught artist, fashioned an exceptional range of work from scratchboards, sketches, genre scenes, pastoral images and starkly modernist figure compositions to a series of late, apocalyptic landscapes. His expansive creativity and sharp eye for visual innovation extended into graphics-based design, educational and illustration work which was routinely commissioned and supported by some of India's leading cultural and news organisations. Anand's life and aesthetic intersected with some of the foundational events which defined and shaped modern Indian consciousness. From the bitter, family legacy of the Amritsar massacre, through to the trauma of Partition and the post-Independence realpolitik of Congress and Communist Party mandates, he recognised the self-deception and vanity of power and the complicity of the elites through which it was exercised. Anand's legacy registers a singular consciousness; a profoundly human belief in a socially redemptive aesthetic and the agency of ordinary men and women to realise and to fashion their own futures within a contested modernity. Narratives for Indian Modernity follows the rediscovery and painstaking restoration of much of Anand's oeuvre, the location of previously overlooked archival and family records and interviews with surviving peers and friends. In doing so, it offers a critical perspective on an outsider artist and maverick who eschewed the attractions and blandishments of a commercial or overseas career, but who nevertheless kept witness to India's rebirth as a sovereign nation and ultimately, its emergence as a regional superpower.