Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Manu Bhagavan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Nuclear Science ◽  
External Relations ◽  
Political Conversation ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
United Nation

The introduction presents India’s role in the Cold War by providing a background of India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru. Also briefly discussed are a summary of the United Nation and the role India played in political conversation, topics, and events such as human rights, India’s role as a peacemaker, involvement in the development nuclear science, and politics. The introduction then outlines India’s approach to the Cold War and explains the book’s thematic sections. Part I focuses on the interplay of a bifurcated subcontinent with the polarized superpowers. Part II accentuates India’s peacekeeping aspirations. Part III discusses the domestic economic and political developments that were deeply intertwined with external relations, ideologies, and interventionism during the Cold War. Lastly, in light of all three portions, the book assesses India’s multifaceted role in the Cold War.

Hindu Nationalists and the Cold War

2019 ◽  
pp. 229-254
Author(s):  
Rahul Sagar
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
The West ◽  
Post Cold War ◽  
Constituent Assembly ◽  
New Development ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Jawaharlal Nehru ◽  
Broad Consensus

It is widely believed that at the time of Independence there was in India a broad consensus on non-alignment. This consensus, crafted by India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, is depicted as having steadily weakened over subsequent decades, eventually collapsing when diplomatic isolation and near bankruptcy toward the end of the Cold War prompted India to revitalize relations with the West. The evidence does not support this narrative, however. Drawing on a variety of sources, including Constituent Assembly debates and prominent essays, this essay shows that there were throughout the Cold War voices—often Hindu nationalists otherwise suspicious of modernity—calling for closer relations with the West. Though these voices were subdued, recollecting them reveals that post-Cold War declarations of a “natural alliance” between India and America in particular are not a new development, but instead the fruition of a longer view of the West’s significance.

Internationalized science and human rights activism during the late Cold War: The French Committee of Mathematicians

2021 ◽  
pp. 030631272110339
Author(s):  
Ioana Popa
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Historical Sociology ◽  
Transnational Activism ◽  
Transnational Advocacy ◽  
Advocacy Network ◽  
Political Views ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science And Politics ◽  
The Cold War

This article examines the ties between an internationalised science and transnational activism, in particular for causes considered universal, such as defending human rights, during the late Cold War. It focuses on a scientific network that supported mathematicians persecuted for their political views by both left- and right-wing undemocratic regimes. The Committee of Mathematicians was founded in 1974 and was active for a decade, built incrementally as a transnational advocacy network located in several Western countries. Focussing primarily on the Committee’s French component, this article investigates the social and organisational underpinnings of its transnational action and defence of universal principles. It examines the modes of action and how they were shaped by scientists’ professional and even disciplinary affiliations. These focal points allow an interrogation of the place the committee occupied within the space of human rights activism. The article aims to contribute to a historical sociology of the ties between science and politics and of the transnational trends that strained national frameworks, while moving away from an approach focussed solely on political macrotrends that fuelled the Cold War.

scholarly journals The Right to Survival in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-117 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jiyoung Song
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Confucian Tradition ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Past ◽  
North Korean Defectors ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Over Time

AbstractFor the past decade, the author has examined North Korean primary public documents and concludes that there have been changes of identities and ideas in the public discourse of human rights in the DPRK: from strong post-colonialism to Marxism-Leninism, from there to the creation of Juche as the state ideology and finally 'our style' socialism. This paper explains the background to Kim Jong Il's 'our style' human rights in North Korea: his broader framework, 'our style' socialism, with its two supporting ideational mechanisms, named 'virtuous politics' and 'military-first politics'. It analyses how some of these characteristics have disappeared while others have been reinforced over time. Marxism has significantly withered away since the end of the Cold War, and communism was finally deleted from the latest 2009 amended Socialist Constitution, whereas the concept of sovereignty has been strengthened and the language of duties has been actively employed by the authority almost as a relapse to the feudal Confucian tradition. The paper also includes some first-hand accounts from North Korean defectors interviewed in South Korea in October–December 2008. They show the perception of ordinary North Koreans on the ideas of human rights.

What Future for Human Rights?

2014 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
James W. Nickel
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Labor Unions ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Environmental Movement ◽  
World War ◽  
Early Stages ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
The Cold War

Like people born shortly after World War II, the international human rights movement recently had its sixty-fifth birthday. This could mean that retirement is at hand and that death will come in a few decades. After all, the formulations of human rights that activists, lawyers, and politicians use today mostly derive from the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the world in 1948 was very different from our world today: the cold war was about to break out, communism was a strong and optimistic political force in an expansionist phase, and Western Europe was still recovering from the war. The struggle against entrenched racism and sexism had only just begun, decolonization was in its early stages, and Asia was still poor (Japan was under military reconstruction, and Mao's heavy-handed revolution in China was still in the future). Labor unions were strong in the industrialized world, and the movement of women into work outside the home and farm was in its early stages. Farming was less technological and usually on a smaller scale, the environmental movement had not yet flowered, and human-caused climate change was present but unrecognized. Personal computers and social networking were decades away, and Earth's human population was well under three billion.

Human Rights, Perestroika and the End of the Cold War

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-141
Author(s):  
Marie-Pierre Rey
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
The Cold War

Defying Communism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aryeh Neier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Iron Curtain ◽  
International Human Rights ◽  
Human Rights Movement ◽  
International Human ◽  
Extra Weight ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
East West

This chapter details how the rise of the international human rights movement as a significant force in world affairs cannot be separated from the Cold War context in which it took place. The Cold War magnified the importance of citizen efforts to promote rights and, though many of those involved in the movement during the Cold War era took significant risks and suffered severe consequences, it was the circumstances of the East–West conflict that attracted many of them to the cause in the first place. Rights activists on both sides of the Iron Curtain became aware that calling attention to abuses of rights by their own governments carried extra weight in an era when a global competition was underway for people's hearts and minds.

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