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- Convenor:
-
Steven Wilkinson
(Yale University)
- Location:
- C407
- Start time:
- 28 July, 2012 at
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
This panel will examine various aspects of the transition from the colonial state to independent India in the 1940s and 1950s: the beginnings of the 'permit raj' and anti-corruption measures, changes in the Indian Army, and debates over minorities, the constitution and role of the state.
Long Abstract:
This panel will examine various aspects of the transition from the colonial state to independent India in the 1940s and 1950s, looking at the beginnings of the 'permit raj' and anti-corruption measures (Gould), the Indian Army's response to efforts to make it stop recruiting predominantly from the 'martial classes'(Wilkinson), and debates over minorities, the constitution and role of the state (Shani).
Accepted papers:
Session 1Ian Copland (Monash UIniversity)
Paper short abstract:
This paper canvasses the case for seeing the 1960s as a major transitional monent in the history of post-colonial India by looking at the response of the India Gandhi-led Congress government to a mass agitation designed to bring about a federal laww banning cow-slaughter.
Paper long abstract:
Recently, a few scholars have begun (not before time) to historicize post-colonial India. Among the challenges of this project is to identify meaningful turning points in the story that might translate into narrative breaks. This paper canvasses the case for seeing the late 1960s as one of these transitional moments, focussing on the response of the Congress Party and its novice Prime Minister to a mass agitation designed to pressure the Centre into passing federal legislation criminalising cow-slaughter. From one perspective, this trial of strength between the government and the Hindu Right can be read as an object lesson in realpolitik; indeed the paper will argue that it played a crucial part in the making of Indira Gandhi as a political leader. However, even as Gandhi turned the tables on her opponents, she looked for ways to coopt the rising neo-Hindu movement to the advantage of the Congress. Within a few years, communal appeals, the wedging of minorities and the cultivation of orthodox religious leaders had become major weapons in the party's electoral armoury. With hindsight, the 1960s can be seen as the years in which discourses and strategies rooted in the perception that attachments to religion/community were key electoral motivetors finally entered mainstream Indian politics.
William Gould (University of Leeds)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines public discourses of ‘corruption’ during 1940s/50s India’s food rationing/controls. It explores the public mediation of scandals in black marketing and how representations of the ‘public’ and ‘state’ were informed by scandal, and uncertainties about citizenship and belonging.
Paper long abstract:
This paper will examine how public discourses of 'corruption' were transformed in the 1940s and 1950s as a result of the specific circumstances of wartime/post-war food rationing and controls. Building on recent work on the ambiguous boundaries of citizenship and the ambivalent meanings of 'independence' in 1947-8, the paper will look at how corruption was both managed and publicised during the 'crisis' moments of the mid 1940s - controls on food and civil supplies, rationing and refugee rehabilitation. The contextual framework of analysis will be based around public and official notions of corruption, as manifested in the significant anti-corruption reports of 1938, 1947-8 and 1964, and field interviews with low level civil servants and police officers. Food Control and refugee rehabilitation officers epitomised the fragile nexus between the local state, the changing economy and UP public expectations about the new independent state. In this connection, the paper will look at how the press and local political leadership were used to mediate scandals surrounding black marketing and licensing in relation to these servants of the state. It will further examine how these scandals were linked to the state insecurities surrounding refugees and Pakistan. In particular, it will argue that representations of the 'public' and the 'state' were informed by the ambiguous publicity surrounding the idea of corruption, and the uncertain definitions of citizenship attached to the displaced and dispossessed.
Ornit Shani (University of Haifa)
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the preparation of the electoral roll for the first general elections on the basis of universal adult suffrage in India along the unfolding consequences of partition. It analyses the implications of this process for the institutionalisation of India’s democratic nationhood
Paper long abstract:
This study explores the preparation of the electoral roll for the first general elections on the basis of universal adult suffrage in India as a key processes in the forging of India's nationhood at a moment of myriad ruptures that threatened the integrity of the new nation state. While the partition of the subcontinent was taking place, more than 560 princely states were being integrated into the union and in anticipation of a constitution, enrolling an electorate of more than 173 million people became, the paper shows, a way of building nationhood. The preparation of the roll dealt in the most practical ways with the question of membership in the new nation. National elections became a central ritual in reproducing India's democratic nationhood since independence. The foundation of this ritual was laid during the making of universal franchise. Contrary to the perception that democratic nationhood in India was simply endowed from above, the paper demonstrates that there was extensive agency from below in this process. It draws on newly accessed and original primary source materials from Indian government archives.
Steven Wilkinson (Yale University)
Paper short abstract:
Prior to independence nationalist politicians were united in their criticism of the divide and rule structure of the colonial Indian army. I examine why, despite this, successive governments have not decided radically reshaped India's 'martial class' military.
Paper long abstract:
Prior to independence nationalist politicians were united in their criticism of the divide and rule structure of the colonial Indian army, and argued that India could not survive as a democracy without that institution's radical reform. Yet after independence successive governments have not carried out dramatic reforms, and the colonial 'martial class' regiments remain in place today. I take advantage of hithero untapped archival and pension records to provide a detailed picture of the ethnic and regional recruitment patterns of the post-war Indian army.I examine how and why these regiments have survived, and why a democratic state has decided not to radically reshape a colonially-structured military.