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From the Colonial to the Postcolonial: India and Pakistan in Transition
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.
368 pages, Hardcover
First published April 19, 2007
2 people are currently reading
97 people want to read
About the author
Dipesh Chakrabarty
48 books71 followersDipesh Chakrabarty (b. 1948) is a Bengali historian who has also made contributions to postcolonial theory and subaltern studies.
He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.
He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.
In 2011 he received an Honorary degree from the University of Antwerp.
He attended Presidency College of the University of Calcutta, where he received his undergraduate degree in physics. He also received a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from Indian Institute of Management Calcutta. Later he moved on to the Australian National University in Canberra, from where he earned a PhD in history.
He is currently the Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations and the College at the University of Chicago. He was a visiting faculty at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta. Chakrabarty also serves as a contributing editor for Public Culture, an academic journal published by Duke University Press.
He was a member of the Subaltern Studies collective. He has recently made important contributions to the intersections between history and postcolonial theory (Provincializing Europe [PE]), which continues and revises his earlier historical work on working-class history in Bengal (Rethinking Working-Class History). PE adds considerably to the debate of how postcolonial discourse engages in the writing of history (e.g., Robert J. C. Young's "White Mythologies"), critiquing historicism, which is intimately related to the West's notion of linear time. Chakrabarty argues that Western historiography's historicism universalizes liberalism, projecting it to all ends of the map. He suggests that, under the rubric of historicism, the end-goal of every society is to develop towards nationalism.
In 2011 he received an Honorary degree from the University of Antwerp.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
March 21, 2023
This really funny thing happens with me, the longer I have to read the faster I lose interest.
Yeah no one's laughing, but anyways this was fucking incredible for all the time that I liked it.
Now you see, revelations only come to the ignorant, so you may imagine all those coming to me when I read this book elucidating all these nuances (subjective) about this country's history (and india and bengal, but revelations probably don't come when you're too ignorant).
This is a collection of essays that, according to the author who only had one essay to contribute to this list, challanges what I understand by decolonization. Apparently modestly though, so generally giving reasons for when to consider the states post colonial, but it's already making fun of what my answer probably wouldve been to what decolonization was, prior to reading this book. Which was, byebye brits with their bean sandwiches or something (idk I'm not British) and their queen fetish (a real British person told me about this one). Guess what? I was wrong, but it's okay because it seems Fanon was too, to the extent that he considered decolonization absolutist, when empirically the waters were murkier than that.
Did you know I got bored sometimes and started skipping shit?
Anyways.
I gift the reader of this review with the details of my favourite essay, and as always, packed with all my misunderstandings:
Indian Constitutionalism: The Articulation of a Political Vision
This was the first one, and it sold me on the book, which is easy enough to see given all the pages highlighted.
To, again, highlight my ignorance and show my perspective, if you asked me why people in sub continent India wanted independence it would've been something along the lines of "to be free" and "to practice their religion more freely?", and both of these conceptions were challenged.
The issues Colonial indians were most preoccupied with were three: concerns for national unity, social issues of illiteracy and poverty and all, foreign affairs and India's standing in the world.
It's honestly easy enough to see why all three were very important to them, it's considerably more interesting to see what happened to 'freedom' given these issues.
Freedom essentially became something subsidiary to these three concerns, and with the nation, a project of the future. Freedom, was to some extent, what the solving of these issues looked like, and could no longer stand alone. The thing is, independence does not guarantee that any of these issues will be solved, and so given that freedom subsided something that's at best prospective is very ironic, knowing the nature of literal fucking independence.
This is given that enfranchisement isn't important because a person fulfills some criteria (like being educated) but because it's literally the promise the state makes of the individual, ratifying it's purposefulness as an entity. So it's when you count as a citizen, as opposed to a person, which really adds upto Falguni Sheth explaining that the Unruly group, under liberalism, comes into existence when they say they'll give equal rights to everyone, that is, everyone who counts, you can guess that the Unruly group doesn't (basically atleast).
Freedom, on this view, exists as a future prospect, as something that is part of a plan, and which can only be realized through the choices and resolution of that plan. It becomes a captive instrument of a collective and national endeavour, and hence, freighted with the seriousness and responsibility of pursuing an arduous collective journey.
Hannah Arendt thought that public freedom was harder to guarantee once the political powers burden themselves with addressing social problems, because this makes their power harder to chasten and more absolute. The American Constitution was thus to her an ideal, with it's limited political power and secured public freedom, in contrast to the considerably more fashionable French constitution, which braided social issues with political power. Unified by their wants for, previously denied, baguettes.
Her mention is for comparison, the essayist says it best what they're arguing for:
Unity and social uplift, I want to suggest, are the terms through which a purely political vision is articulated and other forms of power and authority eclipsed or, at least, rendered secondary. Politics becomes the ground for national unity and the redressing of social issues the central venue through which this ground and unity are constantly reaffirmed.
One interesting fact is that the indian constitution was very secular and committed to the most capacious sense of justice, which is very much unlike the state itself with it's society entrenched in the caste system and religion and what not.
A more interesting fact is that, despite what the society was like, universal franchise is given and was also not opposed by the people in power, rather counter intuitively, because they thought that it might work to the advantage of the new state power. This is rather unlike American liberalism from my understanding, who definitely and totally and absolutely give very very universal franchise.
Given how politics deals with it's issues, cutting off the temporality of it, and in effect treating smth like abolishing the caste system as the same as building a dam, depending on necessity (theoretically), freedom can't become anything but subsidiary when the focus is on the problems of the individual, which were now the constitutional warrant for indian unity.
Such a chastened conception of power and politics is plainly not the case with constitutionalism in much of the twentieth century and in India in particular. This constitutionalism must and does constitute power and it does increase and celebrate its ambit. It is only through politics that the nation can be imagined, let alone administered. In the Indian case, once partition wrecks the geographical grounds of nationhood, politics becomes even more central to stitching the nation and giving expression to the whole.
...
Damn that was one essay?
Yeah no one's laughing, but anyways this was fucking incredible for all the time that I liked it.
Now you see, revelations only come to the ignorant, so you may imagine all those coming to me when I read this book elucidating all these nuances (subjective) about this country's history (and india and bengal, but revelations probably don't come when you're too ignorant).
This is a collection of essays that, according to the author who only had one essay to contribute to this list, challanges what I understand by decolonization. Apparently modestly though, so generally giving reasons for when to consider the states post colonial, but it's already making fun of what my answer probably wouldve been to what decolonization was, prior to reading this book. Which was, byebye brits with their bean sandwiches or something (idk I'm not British) and their queen fetish (a real British person told me about this one). Guess what? I was wrong, but it's okay because it seems Fanon was too, to the extent that he considered decolonization absolutist, when empirically the waters were murkier than that.
Did you know I got bored sometimes and started skipping shit?
Anyways.
I gift the reader of this review with the details of my favourite essay, and as always, packed with all my misunderstandings:
Indian Constitutionalism: The Articulation of a Political Vision
This was the first one, and it sold me on the book, which is easy enough to see given all the pages highlighted.
To, again, highlight my ignorance and show my perspective, if you asked me why people in sub continent India wanted independence it would've been something along the lines of "to be free" and "to practice their religion more freely?", and both of these conceptions were challenged.
The issues Colonial indians were most preoccupied with were three: concerns for national unity, social issues of illiteracy and poverty and all, foreign affairs and India's standing in the world.
It's honestly easy enough to see why all three were very important to them, it's considerably more interesting to see what happened to 'freedom' given these issues.
Freedom essentially became something subsidiary to these three concerns, and with the nation, a project of the future. Freedom, was to some extent, what the solving of these issues looked like, and could no longer stand alone. The thing is, independence does not guarantee that any of these issues will be solved, and so given that freedom subsided something that's at best prospective is very ironic, knowing the nature of literal fucking independence.
This is given that enfranchisement isn't important because a person fulfills some criteria (like being educated) but because it's literally the promise the state makes of the individual, ratifying it's purposefulness as an entity. So it's when you count as a citizen, as opposed to a person, which really adds upto Falguni Sheth explaining that the Unruly group, under liberalism, comes into existence when they say they'll give equal rights to everyone, that is, everyone who counts, you can guess that the Unruly group doesn't (basically atleast).
Freedom, on this view, exists as a future prospect, as something that is part of a plan, and which can only be realized through the choices and resolution of that plan. It becomes a captive instrument of a collective and national endeavour, and hence, freighted with the seriousness and responsibility of pursuing an arduous collective journey.
Hannah Arendt thought that public freedom was harder to guarantee once the political powers burden themselves with addressing social problems, because this makes their power harder to chasten and more absolute. The American Constitution was thus to her an ideal, with it's limited political power and secured public freedom, in contrast to the considerably more fashionable French constitution, which braided social issues with political power. Unified by their wants for, previously denied, baguettes.
Her mention is for comparison, the essayist says it best what they're arguing for:
Unity and social uplift, I want to suggest, are the terms through which a purely political vision is articulated and other forms of power and authority eclipsed or, at least, rendered secondary. Politics becomes the ground for national unity and the redressing of social issues the central venue through which this ground and unity are constantly reaffirmed.
One interesting fact is that the indian constitution was very secular and committed to the most capacious sense of justice, which is very much unlike the state itself with it's society entrenched in the caste system and religion and what not.
A more interesting fact is that, despite what the society was like, universal franchise is given and was also not opposed by the people in power, rather counter intuitively, because they thought that it might work to the advantage of the new state power. This is rather unlike American liberalism from my understanding, who definitely and totally and absolutely give very very universal franchise.
Given how politics deals with it's issues, cutting off the temporality of it, and in effect treating smth like abolishing the caste system as the same as building a dam, depending on necessity (theoretically), freedom can't become anything but subsidiary when the focus is on the problems of the individual, which were now the constitutional warrant for indian unity.
Such a chastened conception of power and politics is plainly not the case with constitutionalism in much of the twentieth century and in India in particular. This constitutionalism must and does constitute power and it does increase and celebrate its ambit. It is only through politics that the nation can be imagined, let alone administered. In the Indian case, once partition wrecks the geographical grounds of nationhood, politics becomes even more central to stitching the nation and giving expression to the whole.
...
Damn that was one essay?
Displaying 1 of 1 review