Sovereignty, Federation, and Constituent Power in Interwar India, ca. 1917–39

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 421-433 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sunil Purushotham
Keyword(s):  
Decisive Role ◽  
Major Influence ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
Plausible Model ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Indian National Congress

Abstract For nearly three decades prior to 1947 federation was the dominant and most plausible model for reforming Britain's Indian Empire. Federation offered a capacious framework for innovating upon the sovereign landscapes of empire, for imagining a wide array of nonnational futures, and for elaborating questions of rights and democracy. This essay examines official projects of federation in interwar India, efforts that culminated with the “Federation of India” envisioned by the 1935 Government of India Act. These projects sought to codify the Raj's uncodified, plural, and ambiguous imperial regime of sovereignty. As a result, the nearly six hundred “princely states” or “Indian States” had a major influence over the course of India's constitutional development. The 1935 Act inaugurated the most decisive phase in late colonial India's political and constitutional development by unleashing a competition over sovereignty in the subcontinent. It was in this context that a fully sovereign constituent assembly was adopted by the Indian National Congress as their fundamental demand. Federation played a decisive role in the development of republicanism in India.

Transfer of Power and the Crisis of Dalit Politics in India, 1945–47

2000 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 893-942 ◽  
Author(s):  
SEKHAR BANDYOPADHYAY
Keyword(s):  
General Public ◽  
Political Identity ◽  
General Election ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
Public Meeting ◽  
Scheduled Castes ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Indian National Congress

Ever since its beginning, organized dalit politics under the leadership of Dr B. R. Ambedkar had been consistently moving away from the Indian National Congress and the Gandhian politics of integration. It was drifting towards an assertion of separate political identity of its own, which in the end was enshrined formally in the new constitution of the All India Scheduled Caste Federation, established in 1942. A textual discursive representation of this sense of alienation may be found in Ambedkar's book, What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, published in 1945. Yet, within two years, in July 1947, we find Ambedkar accepting Congress nomination for a seat in the Constituent Assembly. A few months later he was inducted into the first Nehru Cabinet of free India, ostensibly on the basis of a recommendation from Gandhi himself. In January 1950, speaking at a general public meeting in Bombay, organized by the All India Scheduled Castes Federation, he advised the dalits to co-operate with the Congress and to think of their country first, before considering their sectarian interests. But then within a few months again, this alliance broke down over his differences with Congress stalwarts, who, among other things, refused to support him on the Hindu Code Bill. He resigned from the Cabinet in 1951 and in the subsequent general election in 1952, he was defeated in the Bombay parliamentary constituency by a political nonentity, whose only advantage was that he contested on a Congress ticket. Ambedkar's chief election agent, Kamalakant Chitre described this electoral debacle as nothing but a ‘crisis’.

Incident at Nabha: Interaction between Indian States and British Indian Politics

1969 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 563-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barbara N. Ramusack
Keyword(s):  
State Politics ◽  
Religious Leaders ◽  
British Government ◽  
Indian States ◽  
Management Committee ◽  
Indian Politics ◽  
Indian State ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
Indian National Congress

With this one sentence paragraph Jawaharlal Nehru began a description of his visit to and subsequent arrest and trial in the Punjab state of Nabha during the agitation over the abdication of its princely ruler, Maharaja Ripudaman Singh. Though Nehru treated his experiences as an alarming but politically insignificant initiation into Indian state politics, the abdication of Nabha and concomitant events came to have major repercussions on political developments within the Sikh community and on the evolution of British policies within the Punjab. This incident at Nabha originated in a senseless but bitter personal feud between Ripudaman Singh and his neighbor, Maharaja Bhupinder Singh of Patiala. It assumed wider ramifications when each rival sought support for his respective position from such varied groups as the British government, Sikh organizations like the newly formed Shiromani Gurdawara Parbandhak Committee (the Central Gurdwara Management Committee which will hereafter be referred to as the S.G.P.C.) and the Akali Dal, the Indian National Congress and assorted Indian nationalist and Sikh religious leaders. As these new forces entered the dispute, the area of controversy was broadened and issues of political significance were raised.

Home Rule for India

1919 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 301-305
Author(s):  
Graham H. Stuart
Keyword(s):  
Civil Service ◽  
Home Rule ◽  
Queen Victoria ◽  
The People ◽  
Political Office ◽  
National Congress ◽  
The Government ◽  
Indian National Congress

The epoch-marking proclamation issued by Queen Victoria in 1858 announced to the people of India that they were to be admitted freely and impartially to political office. The autocratic bureaucracy of foreigners, culminating in the régime of Lord Curzon, when only about 4 per cent of the members of the Indian civil service were natives, was hardly a fulfillment of the spirit of this proclamation. Nor did the peoples of India consider it such. The spirit of unrest finally took shape in the Indian National Congress, founded in 1885, to give expression to the ideas of the educated classes; and this body soon came to be regarded as the unofficial Indian parliament. Each year it brought forward a list of ills which the government of India as then organized could not hope to remedy.

Ayodhya Dispute and Responses of India’s Islamic Neighbors and Hindu Nationalism in India

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-236
Keyword(s):  
South Asian ◽  
Civil Disobedience ◽  
Asian Country ◽  
Hindu Nationalism ◽  
Mahatma Gandhi ◽  
South Asian Country ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Independence Movements ◽  
Indian National Congress

India has been noted for its independence movements including the non-cooperation and civil disobedience movements under the leadership of the Indian National Congress in general and Mahatma Gandhi in particular. However, in this South Asian country, there is another kind of nationalism that roots in Hinduism. The objective of the article is to explain the nature of Hindu nationalism in India. To gain this aim, the author is going to implement three tasks including giving a brief overview of the Ayodhya dispute; reporting the reactions from India’s neighbors to the Ayodhya issue; and explaining the relations among the Ayodhya related legal fights and responses from Pakistan and Bangladesh, as well as Hindu nationalism. As a result, the study is helpful to comprehend the politics of India and its nationalism. Received 25th September 2020; Revised 2nd January 2021; Accepted 20th February 2021

Mobilization in a Mass Movement: Congress ‘Propaganda’ in the United Provinces (India), 1930—34

1975 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Pandey
Keyword(s):  
Mass Movement ◽  
The People ◽  
Constructive Work ◽  
National Congress ◽  
United Provinces ◽  
Indian National Congress

From 1919 to 1922 the Indian National Congress carried out its first country-wide programme of mass agitations against the British. For the next six or seven years the party concentrated on the electoral arena. By fits and starts, it also carried on a programme of so-called ‘constructive’ work among the mass of the people. This helped to maintain some of the popular contacts earlier established. Elections, and the bitter communal conflicts that were a feature of the mid-1920s, at least in the United Provinces (U.P.), forged other links.

Why Constituent Power?

2020 ◽  
pp. 17-40
Author(s):  
Markus Patberg
Keyword(s):  
European Integration ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Constituent Power ◽  
Constitutional Development ◽  
Popular Participation ◽  
Constitutional Politics ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Methodological Challenges ◽  
The Eu ◽  
Popular Control

This chapter addresses the question of why a theory of constituent power in the EU is needed. While the EU has long since taken on a constitutional character, this is in no way reflected in adequate popular participation in decisions about its basic legal order. The EU is shaped through a combination of intergovernmental treaty making and integration through law that sidelines citizens. Constitutional mutation further decouples the EU’s constitutional development from popular control and shields fundamental decisions from democratic contestation. To capture the legitimacy gap that opens up here, the chapter introduces an understanding of constituent power as political autonomy at the level of constitutional politics. It argues that European integration is based on a usurpation, with constituted powers operating as de facto constituent powers. As executives and courts shape the EU in a largely self-referential manner, citizens are deprived of a crucial dimension of political autonomy. The chapter concludes with preliminary considerations on a theory of constituent power in the EU, addressing substantive and methodological challenges involved in its elaboration, as well as possible objections to the project as such.

India After the Coup

Worldview ◽  
1976 ◽  
Vol 19 (4) ◽  
pp. 31-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Oren
Keyword(s):  
Prime Minister ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Right Wing ◽  
Absolute Power ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
The World ◽  
Presidential Decree ◽  
National Congress ◽  
Indian National Congress

Thousands of predawn arrests of opposition political figures and journalists, the suspension of civil liberties by presidential decree, the imposition of a rigid press censorship—thus in June, 1975, was signaled the end of Indian democracy. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi's actions mean that the number of people in the world living under democratic regimes has been more than halved. Perhaps India's masses prefer bread to liberty, but they are likely to have neither. Having obtained absolute power, Mrs. Gandhi and her ruling Indian National Congress seem to have little idea of what it is to be used for.Apologists for the emergency say it was necessary to ward off a right-wing conspiracy against Mrs. Gandhi because of her efforts at reform. They note that most of those arrested since the emergency began are hoarders of food, manipulators of prices, and holders of money from secret deals.

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