From the Colonial to the Postcolonial : India and Pakistan in Transition/Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar and Andrew Sartori. New Delhi, Oxford
University Press, 2007, xiv, 370 p., ISBN 019-567956-3.
From the Colonial to the Postcolonial : India and Pakistan in Transition/Dipesh
Chakrabarty, Rochona Majumdar and Andrew Sartori. New Delhi, Oxford
University Press, 2007, xiv, 370 p., ISBN 019-567956-3.
Contents: Foreword/Anthony Low. Acknowledgements. Introduction: From the colonial to the postcolonial: India and Pakistan in transition/Dipesh Chakrabarty. Part I. Questions of democracy: 1. Indian constitutionalism: the articulation of a political vision/Uday S. Mehta. 2. 'In the Name of Politics' : democracy and the power of the multitude in India/Dipesh Chakrabarty. 3. Election law and the 'People' in colonial and postcolonial India/David Gilmartin. Part II. Minority imaginings: 4. The minority as political form/Faisal Devji. 5. Observant Muslims, secular Indians: the political vision of Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani, 1938-57/Barbara Metcalf. 6. Abul Mansur Ahmad and the cultural politics of Bengali Pakistanism/Andrew Sartori. 7. Ambedkar and the politics of minority: a reading/Anupama Rao. Part III. Caste, class, and nation: 8. Cricket in India: representative playing field to restrictive preserve/Boria Majumdar. 9. 'South Indians are like that only': communal identity in late colonial Bombay/Nikhil Rao. 10. Peasant rebellions and the Muslim League Government in East Bengal, 1947-54/A.H. Ahmed Kamal. Part IV. Law, capital, and subject formation: 11. Family values in transition: debates around the Hindu Code Bill/Rochona Majumdar. 12. Capitalist subjects in transition/Ritu Birla. Part V. Regions: 13. 'Aryavarta', 'Hind', or 'Uttar Pradesh': the postcolonial naming and framing of a 'region'/Gyanesh Kudaisya. 14. The imprint of the past: reflections of regime change with particular reference to 'Middle India', c.1947-50/Ian Copland. Part VI. Wider perspectives: 15. Diaspora and Swaraj, Swaraj and Diaspora/John D. Kelly and Martha Kaplan. 16. Towards a history of the present: Southern perspectives on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries/David Washbrook. Contributors. Index.
"The need to extend historical scholarship to the postcolonial phase of South Asian societies is increasingly being recognized by academics in different parts of the world. From the Colonial to the Postcolonial addresses this key concern by outlining the historical complexities involved in nations born under the aegis of colonial rule evolving into postcolonial polities. It explores aspects of social and political processes accompanying the transition from colonial to the postcolonial regimes in India and Pakistan.
What distinguishes this unique collection is its emphasis on the long-term rather than on the years immediately preceding or following 1947. Deploying a variety of analytical approaches the essays mount a subtle yet rich critique of texts that imagine de-colonization as a process signifying compete cultural and institutional autonomy for the once-colonized. Dedicated to the memory of the renowned historian and anthropologist Bernard S. Cohn, this volume emphasizes the necessarily incomplete or fragmentary nature of the transition from colonial to postcolonial formations.
The book brings together a range of distinguished scholars who negotiate the issue of decolonization in different though mutually reinforcing ways--through constitutionalism, law, sports, regionalism, housing, gender, minority issues, Dalit and mass-politics, and class formation.
Wide-ranging and topical, this collection will interest students of history, anthropology, gender studies, and political science particularly those concerned with decolonization and the postcolonial experience." (jacket)
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