German Lessons

Comparative Constitutionalism, States' Rights, and Federalist Imaginaries in Interwar India

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2109334
AutoresDevadas Pillai (0000-0003-0452-0575, Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, autor de correspondencia)
Año2023
Volumen65
Número4
Páginas801-827
Fecha de publicación2023-10-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
EditorialCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417523000191
OpenAlexW4383103842
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas1
Referencias citadas35

This article reveals the hold that German history and constitutionalism had on Indian federalists in the interwar period. A range of federalists from Indian princely states and British provinces, eager to see India become a federation rather than a unitary state fashioned on the English model, looked to Imperial Germany for constitutional lessons. They saw in German history and constitutionalism a federal solution to the so-called 'Indian problem,' wherein the rights of the states would be primary over those of individuals or groups. This German-inspired federal tradition, I argue, departed not only from political pluralism and association-based federalism, but also from the nationalist vision of placing individual rights over state rights. This article presents an alternative genealogy of comparative constitutional thought in India, and examines a post-national worldview that sidestepped the nation-states. By bringing a comparative approach to bear on political and constitutional histories, it escapes the national insularity that often characterizes such histories in colonial India, and places them in the comparative and global context of the interwar circulation of federalist ideas. German-inspired federal ideas of the period offer a counterpoint to corralling futuristic visions of India, and its founding, on the twin axes of anticolonial nationalism and popular sovereignty to the exclusion of state-centric ideas articulated by the princely states

Centralisation · Constitutionalism · Democracy · Economic history · Federalism · Federalist · German · Nation state · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Sovereignty · State (computer science · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · History · Judicial and Constitutional Studies · Law