Righteous Republic

Righteous Republic

Author: Ananya Vajpeyi

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2012-10-31

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 0674071832

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What India’s founders derived from Western political traditions as they struggled to free their country from colonial rule is widely understood. Less well-known is how India’s own rich knowledge traditions of two and a half thousand years influenced these men as they set about constructing a nation in the wake of the Raj. In Righteous Republic, Ananya Vajpeyi furnishes this missing account, a ground-breaking assessment of modern Indian political thought. Taking five of the most important founding figures—Mohandas Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore, Abanindranath Tagore, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B. R. Ambedkar—Vajpeyi looks at how each of them turned to classical texts in order to fashion an original sense of Indian selfhood. The diverse sources in which these leaders and thinkers immersed themselves included Buddhist literature, the Bhagavad Gita, Sanskrit poetry, the edicts of Emperor Ashoka, and the artistic and architectural achievements of the Mughal Empire. India’s founders went to these sources not to recuperate old philosophical frameworks but to invent new ones. In Righteous Republic, a portrait emerges of a group of innovative, synthetic, and cosmopolitan thinkers who succeeded in braiding together two Indian knowledge traditions, the one political and concerned with social questions, the other religious and oriented toward transcendence. Within their vast intellectual, aesthetic, and moral inheritance, the founders searched for different aspects of the self that would allow India to come into its own as a modern nation-state. The new republic they envisaged would embody both India’s struggle for sovereignty and its quest for the self.


Malevolent Republic

Malevolent Republic

Author: K. S. Komireddi

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 178738005X

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After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru's diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. India is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Since 2014, the ruling BJP has unleashed forces that are irreversibly transforming the country. Indian democracy, honed over decades, is now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism. Bigotry has been ennobled as a healthy form of self-assertion, and anti-Muslim vitriol has deluged the mainstream, with religious minorities living in terror of a vengeful majority. Congress now mimics Modi; other parties pray for a miracle. In this blistering critique of India from Indira Gandhi to the present, Komireddi lays bare the cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India's past and demeaning bribes to minorities that led to Modi's decisive electoral victory. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name.


From Raj to Republic

From Raj to Republic

Author: Sunil Purushotham

Publisher: South Asia in Motion

Published: 2021

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 9781503614543

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"This book makes a case for the unprecedented violence in India's immediate postcolonization and argues that it played a crucial role in institutional and constitutional development during this six-year span"--


A People's Constitution

A People's Constitution

Author: Rohit De

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2020-08-04

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 0691210381

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It has long been contended that the Indian Constitution of 1950, a document in English created by elite consensus, has had little influence on India’s greater population. Drawing upon the previously unexplored records of the Supreme Court of India, A People’s Constitution upends this narrative and shows how the Constitution actually transformed the daily lives of citizens in profound and lasting ways. This remarkable legal process was led by individuals on the margins of society, and Rohit De looks at how drinkers, smugglers, petty vendors, butchers, and prostitutes—all despised minorities—shaped the constitutional culture. The Constitution came alive in the popular imagination so much that ordinary people attributed meaning to its existence, took recourse to it, and argued with it. Focusing on the use of constitutional remedies by citizens against new state regulations seeking to reshape the society and economy, De illustrates how laws and policies were frequently undone or renegotiated from below using the state’s own procedures. De examines four important cases that set legal precedents: a Parsi journalist’s contestation of new alcohol prohibition laws, Marwari petty traders’ challenge to the system of commodity control, Muslim butchers’ petition against cow protection laws, and sex workers’ battle to protect their right to practice prostitution. Exploring how the Indian Constitution of 1950 enfranchised the largest population in the world, A People’s Constitution considers the ways that ordinary citizens produced, through litigation, alternative ethical models of citizenship.


A Republic in the Making

A Republic in the Making

Author: Gyanesh Kudaisya

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780198098553

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Présentation de l'éditeur : "This book takes a critical look at India in the momentous 1950s. It looks at the colossal challenges which India faced after Independence. It considers the key ideas, paths, and trajectories which were articulated in these years"


India Today [2 volumes]

India Today [2 volumes]

Author: Arnold P. Kaminsky

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2011-09-23

Total Pages: 925

ISBN-13: 0313374635

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Containing almost 250 entries written by scholars from around the world, this two-volume resource provides current, accurate, and useful information on the politics, economics, society, and cultures of India since 1947. With more than a billion citizens—almost 18 percent of the world's population—India is a reflection of over 5,000 years of interaction and exchange across a wide spectrum of cultures and civilizations. India Today: An Encyclopedia of Life in the Republic describes the growth and development of the nation since it achieved independence from the British Raj in 1947. The two-volume work presents an analytical review of India's transition from fledgling state to the world's largest democracy and potential economic superpower. Providing current data and perspective backed by historical context as appropriate, the encyclopedia brings together the latest scholarship on India's diverse cultures, societies, religions, political cultures, and social and economic challenges. It covers such issues as foreign relations, security, and economic and political developments, helping readers understand India's people and appreciate the nation's importance as a political power and economic force, both regionally and globally.


Courts, Politics and Constitutional Law

Courts, Politics and Constitutional Law

Author: Martin Belov

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2019-10-16

Total Pages: 189

ISBN-13: 1000707970

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This book examines how the judicialization of politics, and the politicization of courts, affect representative democracy, rule of law, and separation of powers. This volume critically assesses the phenomena of judicialization of politics and politicization of the judiciary. It explores the rising impact of courts on key constitutional principles, such as democracy and separation of powers, which is paralleled by increasing criticism of this influence from both liberal and illiberal perspectives. The book also addresses the challenges to rule of law as a principle, preconditioned on independent and powerful courts, which are triggered by both democratic backsliding and the mushrooming of populist constitutionalism and illiberal constitutional regimes. Presenting a wide range of case studies, the book will be a valuable resource for students and academics in constitutional law and political science seeking to understand the increasingly complex relationships between the judiciary, executive and legislature.


India Today

India Today

Author: Stuart Corbridge

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2013-04-03

Total Pages: 402

ISBN-13: 0745676642

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Twenty years ago India was still generally thought of as an archetypal developing country, home to the largest number of poor people of any country in the world, and beset by problems of low economic growth, casteism and violent religious conflict. Now India is being feted as an economic power-house which might well become the second largest economy in the world before the middle of this century. Its democratic traditions, moreover, remain broadly intact. How and why has this historic transformation come about? And what are its implications for the people of India, for Indian society and politics? These are the big questions addressed in this book by three scholars who have lived and researched in different parts of India during the period of this great transformation. Each of the 13 chapters seeks to answer a particular question: When and why did India take off? How did a weak state promote audacious reform? Is government in India becoming more responsive (and to whom)? Does India have a civil society? Does caste still matter? Why is India threatened by a Maoist insurgency? In addressing these and other pressing questions, the authors take full account of vibrant new scholarship that has emerged over the past decade or so, both from Indian writers and India specialists, and from social scientists who have studied India in a comparative context. India Today is a comprehensive and compelling text for students of South Asia, political economy, development and comparative politics as well as anyone interested in the future of the world's largest democracy.


India and the Republic of Korea

India and the Republic of Korea

Author: Skand R. Tayal

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-17

Total Pages: 316

ISBN-13: 1317341570

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Examining the underlying logic of the strategic and economic partnership between the Republic of Korea and India, this book is the first detailed study of the numerous facets — cultural, economic, people-to-people, and strategic — of blossoming relations between two major Asian democracies. This comprehensive survey documents the interaction between the two governments, relying on facts and hitherto unpublished original records provided by India’s Ministry of External Affairs; offers an illuminating account of India’s active role as a neutral party in the post-Second World War events of the Korean War and the division of the Korean Peninsula; and provides a vision of the future direction of India–Korea relations. The author also shares candid observations of Korean society and its people during his service as Ambassador of India in Seoul. The work will be useful to policy makers as well as students of politics and international relations, strategic studies, economics, and contemporary world history.