Status Updates From India after Ghandi: the wor...

Potti Sriramulu is a forgotten man today. This is a pity, for he had a more than minor impact on the history, as well as geography, of his country. For his fast and its aftermath were to spark off a wholesale redrawing of the map of India according to linguistic lines. If Jawaharlal Nehru was the Maker of Modern India, then perhaps Potti Sriramulu should be named its Mercator.

Non-alignment seemed to them to be a creative application of Gandhian principles in world affairs. Confidence in its viability was strengthened when India was called upon to play an important mediatory role in the conflicts and civil wars of the time.

India’s first general election was, among other things, an act of faith. A newly independent country chose to move straight into universal adult suffrage, rather than–as had been the case in the West–at first reserve the right to vote to men of property, with the working class and women excluded from the franchise until much later.