India after 1947: Democracy and Majoritarianism

Catalog description

This course will explore recent histories of post-independence India, focusing on the first three decades of independence (1947-1977) following the end of British colonial rule. Until rather recently, most histories of South Asia concluded with independence, casting, perhaps unconsciously, the end of British rule as the end of history in the region. However, in recent years, we have witnessed a boom of historical writing on post-independence India. In this class, we will analyze this emerging scholarship and focus on the themes of democracy and majoritarianism. We will read about the establishment of universal franchise in 1950s India, the writing and implementation of the constitution, and the country’s experiments with various economic plans. At the same time, we will study the Indian state’s often violent integration of regions originally outside Britain’s direct domain, including the princely states of Kashmir and Hyderabad, and the development of what scholars have described as new forms of colonialism in the region after 1947. Likewise, we will study the growth of majoritarian ideologies and the continued struggle against caste oppression, all while considering India’s place in the larger Cold War. Throughout the class, we will remain attendant to aesthetic developments in media and literature during this period. While the course focuses on India—or more specifically on various communities’ interactions with the Indian state—we will also study developments in Pakistan (and Bangladesh after 1971) and other neighboring states, recognizing that their shared histories did not end with Partition