From Raj to Republic

From Raj to Republic PDF

Author: Sunil Purushotham

Publisher: South Asia in Motion

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9781503614543

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"This book makes a case for the unprecedented violence in India's immediate postcolonization and argues that it played a crucial role in institutional and constitutional development during this six-year span"--

From Raj to Republic

From Raj to Republic PDF

Author: Sunil Purushotham

Publisher: Stanford University Press

Published: 2021-01-19

Total Pages: 424

ISBN-13: 1503614557

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Between 1946 and 1952, the British Raj, the world's largest colony, was transformed into the Republic of India, the world's largest democracy. Independence, the Constituent Assembly Debates, the founding of the Republic, and India's first universal franchise general election occurred amidst the violence and displacement of the Partition, the uncertain and contested integration of the princely states, and the forceful quelling of internal dissent. This book investigates the ways in which these violent conjunctures constituted a postcolonial regime of sovereignty and shaped the historical development of democracy in India at the foundational moment of decolonization and national independence. From Raj to Republic presents a multifaceted history of sovereignty and democracy in India by linking together the princely state of Hyderabad's attempt to establish itself as an independent sovereign state, the partitioning of Punjab, and the communist-led revolutionary movement in the southern Indian region of Telangana. A national, territorial, republican, and liberal polity in India emerged out of a violent and contested process that forged new power relations and opened up historical trajectories with lasting consequences for modern India.

Righteous Republic

Righteous Republic PDF

Author: Ananya Vajpeyi

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0674071832

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What India’s founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well-known is how India’s own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a ground-breaking assessment of modern Indian political thought. Taking five of the most important founding figures—Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar—Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources in which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashoka, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India’s founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In Righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nation-state. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India’s struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.

Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic

Legal Identity, Race and Belonging in the Dominican Republic PDF

Author: Eve Hayes de Kalaf

Publisher: Anthem Press

Published: 2021-11-02

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 1785277669

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This book offers a critical perspective into social policy architectures primarily in relation to questions of race, national identity and belonging in the Americas. It is the first to identify a connection between the role of international actors in promoting the universal provision of legal identity in the Dominican Republic with arbitrary measures to restrict access to citizenship paperwork from populations of (largely, but not exclusively) Haitian descent. The book highlights the current gap in global policy that overlooks the possible alienating effects of social inclusion measures promulgated by international organisations, particularly in countries that discriminate against migrant-descended populations. It also supports concerns regarding the dangers of identity management, noting that as administrative systems improve, new insecurities and uncertainties can develop. Crucially, the book provides a cautionary tale over the rapid expansion of identification practices, offering a timely critique of global policy measures which aim to provide all people everywhere with a legal identity in the run-up to the 2030 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Ideologies of the Raj

Ideologies of the Raj PDF

Author: Thomas R. Metcalf

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1997-02-27

Total Pages: 264

ISBN-13: 9780521589376

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Ideologies of the Raj examines how the British sought to justify their rule over India. The author argues that two divergent strategies were devised to legitimate their authority: the one defined characteristics which the Indians shared with the British themselves, while the other emphasised qualities of enduring 'difference'. In the end, however, the differences predominated in the colonial view of India. Since the British constructed few explicit ideologies of empire, the author explores the workings of the Raj through the study of its underlying assumptions as revealed in policies and writings. Students of modern India and the British Empire will find Thomas Metcalf's book relevant and accessible.

Battles of the New Republic

Battles of the New Republic PDF

Author: Prashant Jha

Publisher: Hurst

Published: 2014-01-12

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1849045240

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Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal is a story of Nepal's transformation from war to peace, monarchy to republic, a Hindu kingdom to a secular state, and a unitary to a potentially federal state. Part-reportage, part-history, part-analysis, part-memoir, and part-biography of the key characters, the book breaks new ground in political writing from the region. With access to the most powerful leaders in the country as well as diplomats, it gives an unprecedented glimpse into Kathmandu's high politics. But this is coupled with ground-level reportage on the lives of ordinary citizens of the hills and the plains, striving for a democratic, just and equitable society. It tracks the hard grind of political negotiations at the heart of the instability in Nepal. It traces the rise of a popular rebellion, its integration into the mainstream, and its steady decline. It investigates Nepal's status as a partly-sovereign country, and reveals India's overwhelming role. It examines the angst of having to prove one's loyalties to one's own country, and exposes the Hindu hill upper-caste dominated power structures. Battles of the New Republic is a story of the deepening of democracy, of the death of a dream, and of that fundamental political dilemma - who exercises power, to what end, and for whose benefit.

An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad

An Appeal to the Ladies of Hyderabad PDF

Author: Benjamin B. Cohen

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2019-07-08

Total Pages: 369

ISBN-13: 0674987659

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Benjamin Cohen tells the dramatic story of Mehdi Hasan and Ellen Donnelly, whose marriage convulsed high society in nineteenth-century India and whose notorious trial reverberated throughout the British Empire, setting the benchmark for Victorian scandals. In the struggle of one couple, he exposes the fault lines that would soon tear a world apart.

A People's Constitution

A People's Constitution PDF

Author: Rohit De

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0691210381

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It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.

The Indian Army and the End of the Raj

The Indian Army and the End of the Raj PDF

Author: Daniel Marston

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2014-04-24

Total Pages: 401

ISBN-13: 0521899753

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A unique examination of the role of the Indian army in post-World War II India in the run-up to Partition. Daniel Marston draws upon extensive archival research and interviews with veterans of the events of 1947 to provide fresh insight into the final days of the British Raj.