The writing of history in India has been fraught with controversies. From the storm over textbooks in the 1970s, and the furore over the Babri Masjid in the 1990s, to the flaring up of religious sentiments over 'beef-eating' and the Ram Sethu, this book provides a synoptic view of teaching and writing of history in post-colonial India. Michael Gottlob explores historical research and teaching as important components contributing to the development of a national identity and ideas of citizenship in post-colonial India. He shows how the urge to decolonize and recover the self has given rise to several approaches that attempt to 'reclaim' Indian history from its colonial past. The book discusses diverse areas like methodological research and public use of history; cultural identity and diversity; nationalism and communalism; and social movements and deconstructs their far-reaching implications in contemporary India. It also examines the role of women, Dalits, and Adivasis to understand their position in the multicultural reality of India.

Hidden behind the much-touted success story of India’s emergence as an economic superpower is another, far more complex narrative of the nation’s recent history, one in which economic development is frequently countered by profoundly unsettling, and often violent, political movements. In Democracy against Development, Jeffrey Witsoe investigates this counter-narrative, uncovering an antagonistic relationship between recent democratic mobilization and development-oriented governance in India. Witsoe looks at the history of colonialism in India and its role in both shaping modern caste identities and linking locally powerful caste groups to state institutions, which has effectively created a postcolonial patronage state. He then looks at the rise of lower-caste politics in one of India’s poorest and most populous states, Bihar, showing how this increase in democratic participation has radically threatened the patronage state by systematically weakening its institutions and disrupting its development projects. By depicting democracy and development as they truly are in India—in tension—Witsoe reveals crucial new empirical and theoretical insights about the long-term trajectory of democratization in the larger postcolonial world.

This book surveys and analyses the economic, political and cultural changes which have taken place in India since its Independence. It explores some of the defining moments in the history of post-colonial India, and brings together recent works of scholars of different disciplines to provide dynamic new insights into the half-century since Independence. The effects of decolonisation, modernisation, and industrialisation are given special attention, particularly in relation to the impacts felt by women and minorities both in the country and the city. The colossal effects of state projects on the environment are also considered. An important focus of the papers is examining the discourses of modernity and the state and the effects they have had on shifting notions of identity. India is today faced with a crisis in the attempts made by the government to accommodate global capitalism in a highly traditional society. Papers in this volume underline two aspects of the current crisis; the deeply worrying failure of liberalisation to stem poverty, and the equally dangerous climate of hostility to secularism. However, the work presented here tries to suggest some possible paths away from the predicaments of communalism and mass poverty.

This volume addresses some of the key issues marking the process of decolonization in India and Pakistan. It looks at decolonization as a long-term process and highlights some of the historical complications involved in nations born under the aegis of the colonial rule evolving into postcolonial polities. It concentrates on particular aspects of the social and political processes involved in the transition from the colonial order to postcolonial regimes. The contributors include a range of distinguished scholars from North America, the United Kingdom, South Asia, and Australia. They approach the issue of decolonization in different but mutually reinforcing ways, through constitutionalism, sports, regionalisms, housing, gender, minority issues, mass-politics, and class formation, The contributors include Dipesh Chakrabarty, David Washbrook, Barbara Metcalf, Ian Copland, Gynaesh Kudaisya, and Anumpama Rao.

DIVExamines the formation of the nation-state in postcolonial India, how it worked to create an identity for itself, to what extent it succeeded, and what may be the prospects for unity in a widely diverse country./div

An interdisciplinary, engaging book which looks at the nature of Indian society since Independence. By focusing on the Doon school, a famous boarding school in India, it unpacks what post-colonialism means to Indian citizens.

Despite its importance to literary and cultural texts of resistance, theater has been largely overlooked as a field of analysis in colonial and postcolonial studies. Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance seeks to address that absence, as it uniquely views drama and performance as central to the practice of nationalism and anti-colonial resistance. Nandi Bhatia argues that Indian theater was a significant force in the struggle against oppressive colonial and postcolonial structures, as it sought to undo various schemes of political and cultural power through its engagement with subjects derived from mythology, history, and available colonial models such as Shakespeare. Bhatia's attention to local histories within a postcolonial framework places performance in a global and transcultural context. Drawing connections between art and politics, between performance and everyday experience, Bhatia shows how performance often intervened in political debates and even changed the course of politics. One of the first Western studies of Indian theater to link the aesthetics and the politics of that theater, Acts of Authority/Acts of Resistance combines in-depth archival research with close readings of dramatic texts performed at critical moments in history. Each chapter amplifies its themes against the backdrop of specific social conditions as it examines particular dramatic productions, from The Indigo Mirror to adaptations of Shakespeare plays by Indian theater companies, illustrating the role of theater in bringing nationalist, anticolonial, and gendered struggles into the public sphere. Nandi Bhatia is Associate Professor of English at the University of Western Ontario.