The Making and Emergence of Modern India

Catalog description

India's transition to social, economic, and political modernity through the experience of British colonial rule and the nationalist struggle. ASIA (HIST) 475Y The Making and Emergence of Modern India (3) (IL)(BA) This course meets the Bachelor of Arts degree requirements. This course covers India's transition to social, economic, and political modernity through the experience of British colonial rule and the nationalist struggle. It begins during the early modern period, when European travelers encountered the flourishing Mughal Empire, and moves into the dynamic moment following, when the East India Company was one of various competing forces, both locally and globally. It then examines the rise of British power, and the various responses to it from collaboration to mutiny; the multiple development of nationalisms and anticolonialisms, including secular, socialist, Hindu and Muslim variations; the accompanying social reform visions, including caste abolition and feminism; the turbulent paths toward partition and independence, resulting in the postcolonial states of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. It then follows the continuing trajectories of these countries after independence, from the Nehruvian years to the neoliberal shift, with attention to emerging social movements and issues including caste and gender relations; religious and separatist politics; struggles around land and development; urbanization, and labor migration. This course raises important questions about the nature of modernity and its relationship to global interconnectedness, the rise of capitalism and colonialism, industry and technology; while emphasizing South Asian social and cultural contributions and responses to these global shifts. By filling in the context of this part of the world to that global story, the course enables students to grapple with some of the major economic and geopolitical trends of the early 21st century.