Rakesh Ankit
Biographic Data
| ID | 1264020 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Rakesh Ankit |
| GIVEN NAMES | Rakesh |
| FAMILY NAME | Ankit |
| SIGNATURE | ANKIT R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Loughborough University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7772-5606 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 38 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 19 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 38 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Bank Nationalisation in India and Its Effect on British Interests, 1969–1970
Anarchism and the “Fascination with Empire”: George Woodcock in India, 1964–1985
This article critically examines George Woodcock’s travel writings on India between 1961 and 1981, exploring the tensions between his anarchist anti-imperialism and the cultural frameworks inherited from his upbringing in the heart of empire. While Woodcock admired Gandhi and sought to understand India through a lens of philosophical anarchism, his engagement was shaped by elite literary connections and orientalist tropes that complicated his vis…
Colonial legacies and the British geological survey in cold war South Asia: 1960S–1980s
This article explores change and continuity in the institutional objectives and actions of the British Geological Survey across independent South Asian countries, namely India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Ceylon/Sri Lanka, and Burma/Myanmar. By focusing on this geographical space from the 1960s, the article tells a political tale of adjustment, in which the colonial background of the British presence in the region was overlain by th…
Looking for Dr B. R. Ambedkar in The Times of India , December 1956–April 1990
This article searches for Dr B. R. Ambedkar (India’s first Law Minister) in the pages of The Times of India ( TOI; India’s largest-selling English-language newspaper) from December 1956 to April 1990, that is, from Ambedkar’s death to his receiving the Bharat Ratna. A lone soldier for his social and political causes, during his life and after his death, Ambedkar’s afterlife has recently seen a total transformation in contemporary India. This arti…
Bombay “city boss,” Congress party treasurer, and union cabinet minister from Nehru to Indira: Sadashiv Kanoji Patil (1898–1981)
S.K. Patil, quintessential Congressman of Bombay city and cabinet minister in three central governments from 1957 to 1963 and 1964 to 1967, was the kind of figure in Indian politics, who personified Rajni Kothari’s Congress “system” of clients-patrons and chains-links. A Patelite, Patil was a thorn in Nehru’s side. A leader of the business community, he identified with a network politics involving capital. He was an indifferent administrator, but…
Probing early Pakistan: East Bengal politicians and their exchanges with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan, 1947–51
This article builds on the correspondence of the prime minister of Pakistan with five political figures from East Bengal who flourished between 1947 and 1951. These were Khwaja Nazimuddin and his brother Shahabuddin, Fazlur Rahman, Nurul Amin and Jogendranath Mandal. Their exchanges with Prime minister Liaquat Ali Khan—at the head of the central government in Karachi—provide a portentous pre-history of the future engagements between the two wings…
Dewan Chaman Lall: From Trade Unions to the Indian Union, 1946–1966
This article is about the afterlife of Dewan Chaman Lall’s interwar internationalism. Exploring the trajectory of his public career from 1946, it shows how Lall, an Oxford-educated trade unionist, and an ally of India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, took a nationalist turn in his later political interventions on/after (a) Partition of British India, (b) the dispute on the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, and (c) on the government of …
Delinking 'the two rupees: The devaluation dilemma and economic divergence in the decolonized subcontinent, September 1949-February 1951
By looking at the September 1949 devaluation dilemma faced by the governments of Pakistan and India, this article argues that it was an early episode of divergence between them following partition. The reasons why Pakistan did not devalue when India did so have remained largely obscured in the historiography. Deeply contested, the decision was a determining event through which the state staked its claim for economic sovereignty, internally and ex…
‘The Indian Maharaja under check…’: The Abolition of Privy Purses and Princely Privileges, 1967–71 and the End of an Era
This article attends to the abolition of the privy purses and princely privileges of ex-rulers achieved between May 1967 to December 1971 in a controversial constitutional episode, in a period of transition for Indian democracy. Moving beyond the usual figures under focus, namely Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and her Principal Secretary P.N. Haksar, it brings to fore a wider cast of characters and their concerns during this campaign. Second, it se…
In trust for the three nations’ ? The India Office Library & Records dispute, 1947–72
Between 1947 and 1972, governments of India and Pakistan laid claims to ownership, management and share of the India Office Library & Records. These attempts and the British government’s responses to them have been bypassed by scholars of decolonisation. This article traces the trajectory of that dispute’s three distinct phases, wherein different proposals were mooted to wrest and retain, respectively the riches and records of the IOL&R. Unlike t…
Towards the Publication of The Transfer of Power Documents, 1961–69
This article attempts a pre-history of the publication of The Transfer of Power documents through the 1960s. In doing so, it: (1) throws light on the external reasons and internal motivations at play for this pivotal production; (2) presents the other options considered and the formula eventually followed; and (3) illustrates the method by which the officials, librarians and historians involved went about including, excluding and editing the docu…
Mountbatten and India, 1964-79: After Nehru
This article throws light on Lord Mountbatten’s enduring involvement in India after 1964, an overlooked feature of his later life. On a number of issues such as the abolition of titles, privileges and privy purses of Indian Princes (1967–71), imposition of Emergency in India (1975), arms sales, expulsion of BBC (1970–72) and evolution of history-writing on Partition, this article evaluates his changing role as a ‘friend of India’ in Britain, whil…
Jayaprakash Narayan and Indira Gandhi, 1966–74: Before the Rivalry
When the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) gave the clarion call of Total Revolution, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi responded heavy-handedly by imposing the Emergency in India in 1974–5. This all-encompassing duel has dominated politics and political scholarship since. Their domestic clash has established many analytical prisms for the contemporary public sphere in India, particularly personality politics versus people’s power, single party versus…
M.C. Chagla and the “Nationalist” Imaginations of a “Political Minority” in India, 1947–67
This article is about some of the governmental experiences of the jurist/diplomat/minister M.C. Chagla, through which, it seeks to cast a certain light on the possibilities and limits of relations between a majority state and a minority individual, albeit of the privileged kind. Chagla’s pre-eminent presence in Bombay’s legal fraternity from 1922 and the High Court from 1941 bequeathed to him a sense of belonginess, which was largely untouched by…
Letters from a Province: Harekrushna Mahtab to Jawaharlal Nehru, 1947–1949
On 1 November 1947, Harekrushna Mahtab, premier of Orissa, British/independent India’s youngest province, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. This was in reply to the first of Nehru’s famous letters to the provincial chiefs. In it, Nehru had expressed his wish to read similarly from them and Mahtab responded in kind. For the next 2 years, Mahtab wrote to Nehru, before leaving Orissa to become a union minister. These letters, presen…
Dr. John Matthai (1886–1959): Between ‘Bombay Plan’ and ‘Planning Commission’
Dr John Matthai held key ministerial offices in New Delhi during a time of transition from pre- to post-independent India. He was Finance Minister twice (1946, 1948–50) and, in between, held the portfolios of Industry & Supply and Railway & Transport. Matthai had been an academic in Madras, an administrator with the central government and an economist in Bombay with the Tata group. His wide expertise and diverse experience brought him a range of …
India in The Pakistan Times , September 1950-February 1951
This article offers a glimpse of the representation of India in The Pakistan Times in 1950–51, in the last months of the first phase of its editorship by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. It contextualizes this reflection in a period of relative lull, marked by pacts on minorities and trade, within the post-Partition upheaval. Focusing especially on editorials, commentaries, and cartoons, it highlights the formation of views of the neighbor from the news that was…
Bearing ‘financial responsibility’ for the Government and the Party: C.D. Deshmukh (1950–56) & T.T. Krishnamachari (1956–58)
Of the 17 years (1946–64) Jawaharlal Nehru was India's Prime Minister, his Congress Party government had a senior politician holding the Finance Ministry for only 5: Morarji Desai (1958–63). Otherwise, this crucial portfolio was held by a succession of experts; an illustration of consociational power sharing. This article is about two of those, C.D. Deshmukh and T.T. Krishnamachari, and some of their chequered governmental experiences. Through th…
Lal Bahadur Shastri, 1964–1966: Leader at a Glance
Lal Bahadur Shastri has been recently recalled as ‘the original accidental Prime Minister’ and ‘architect of India’s real surgical strike’. His sudden death has lately been the subject of a film, The Tashkent Files (2019) and a book, Your Prime Minister is Dead (2018). A memorial to him is the Government of India’s National Academy of Administration, named after him since 1972. And yet, there is less written on him directly, as against approachin…
State before Partition: India’s Interim Government under Wavell
This paper is a study of the Interim Government in British India, formed during the penultimate viceroyalty of Archibald Wavell, from September 1946 to March 1947. It tries to throw light on major and minor personalities and micro and macro processes at work in this improbable interlude and, thus, probes an overshadowed ministerial and bureaucratic set-up in the lead-up to Partition. This understudied set-up constituted yet another compelling ‘sp…
In the hands of a ‘secular state’: Meos in the aftermath of Partition, 1947–49
This article focuses on unpacking the workings of the independent Indian nation-state in the region of Mewat in the aftermath of Partition violence, particularly the state’s rendering of the Meo community there as a minority. This violence has been called a ‘rite of political and territorial passage’ and ‘systemic ethnic cleansing’ by scholars Shail Mayaram and Ian Copland, respectively. Building upon their works, this article focuses on state ac…
Caste Politics in Bihar: In Historical Continuum
This article provides a long-term narrative of movements for social change in Bihar, precipitated by the steady rise to political power by the Backward Classes/Castes in the state, since 1989. Locating this moment in a longer momentum of struggle since the 1920s, it probes the antecedents of recent social change in Bihar politics. Contextualising this process within a long recessional, it traces a larger democratic cycle of empowerment going back…
G.A. Naqvi: From Indian Police (UP), 1926 to Pakistani Citizen (Sindh), 1947
This is the story of how G. A. Naqvi (Indian Police, 1926) of the United Province (UP) was affected by the events of 1947–1948 in British and independent India and Pakistan and had to become what he did not wish to be: a private citizen in Pakistan. It shows how he, like so many others, had to become reconciled to the idea of British India breaking-up into independent India and Pakistan. This process changed forever the relationship between insti…
Junagadh, India and the Logic of Occupation and Appropriation, 1947–49
This article shows the logic of occupation and appropriation that operated in the wake of the integration of the princely state of Junagadh to the dominion of India in November 1947. This re-created the ‘everyday’ state and society in Junagadh and triggered questions of loyalty of Indian Muslims and suspicions about their presence in the country. The old-new Indian state had a heavy-handed response in line with the newly majoritarian, nationalist…
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah of Kashmir, 1965–1975: From Externment to Enthronement
Ousted as Premier, Jammu and Kashmir, in August 1953 and anointed as Chief Minister in February 1975, the so-called ‘Lion of Kashmir’ Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was imprisoned, in between these years, ultimately on charges of treason, with brief intermissions. Much has been written about the politics of Kashmir dispute, less so about the Sheikh and his personal troubles especially after the death of his friend Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964. This som…
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah of Kashmir, 1965–1975: From Externment to Enthronement
Ousted as Premier, Jammu and Kashmir, in August 1953 and anointed as Chief Minister in February 1975, the so-called ‘Lion of Kashmir’ Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was imprisoned, in between these years, ultimately on charges of treason, with brief intermissions. Much has been written about the politics of Kashmir dispute, less so about the Sheikh and his personal troubles especially after the death of his friend Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964. This som…
Janata Party (1974–77): Creation of an All-India Opposition
This article focuses on the interactions among four parties during 1974–77 that led to their combining to form the Janata Party, which represented a united opposition to the then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi and her Congress government in January 1977. These inter-party exchanges remain an overlooked episode in the works on the Janata Party, when compared to its much written about the failure in government (1977–79). Forty years on, Janata Pa…
Between Vanity and Sensitiveness: Indo–British Relations During Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s High-Commissionership (1954–61)
Studies of Indo–British relations in the 1950s have been usually dominated by the personalities of Jawaharlal Nehru and, after him, VK Krishna Menon. This article instead focuses on Vijayalakshmi Pandit and her tenure as India’s High-Commissioner in London. Pandit came to London having served as Nehru’s envoy to the Soviet Union, the USA and the United Nations. Based on government records and private papers in India, Britain and America, this art…
Jayaprakash Narayan, Indian National Congress and Party Politics, 1934–1954
Jayaprakash Narayan, better remembered for his exploits in the Quit India movement of 1942, social work in the 1960s and his call for a ‘Total Revolution’ in 1974, was also a leading Congress socialist between 1934 and 1948, as well as active in non-Congress socialist politics till 1954. An admirer of Jawaharlal Nehru, he was a vocal critic of Vallabhbhai Patel. A radical with pronounced leftist tendencies, he was a bête noire of an elite-based p…
Britain and Kashmir, 1948: “The Arena of the UN”
The Jammu and Kashmir dispute of 1947–1949 between India and Pakistan became the first inter-state conflict to be discussed at the United Nations Security Council. This analysis looks at the views of the government and the delegation of Great Britain, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, on Kashmir through the year of 1948. It argues that the British attitude was determined more by Imperial and Commonwealth strategic and ide…
Bombay “city boss,” Congress party treasurer, and union cabinet minister from Nehru to Indira: Sadashiv Kanoji Patil (1898–1981)
S.K. Patil, quintessential Congressman of Bombay city and cabinet minister in three central governments from 1957 to 1963 and 1964 to 1967, was the kind of figure in Indian politics, who personified Rajni Kothari’s Congress “system” of clients-patrons and chains-links. A Patelite, Patil was a thorn in Nehru’s side. A leader of the business community, he identified with a network politics involving capital. He was an indifferent administrator, but…
Delinking 'the two rupees: The devaluation dilemma and economic divergence in the decolonized subcontinent, September 1949-February 1951
By looking at the September 1949 devaluation dilemma faced by the governments of Pakistan and India, this article argues that it was an early episode of divergence between them following partition. The reasons why Pakistan did not devalue when India did so have remained largely obscured in the historiography. Deeply contested, the decision was a determining event through which the state staked its claim for economic sovereignty, internally and ex…
India in The Pakistan Times , September 1950-February 1951
This article offers a glimpse of the representation of India in The Pakistan Times in 1950–51, in the last months of the first phase of its editorship by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. It contextualizes this reflection in a period of relative lull, marked by pacts on minorities and trade, within the post-Partition upheaval. Focusing especially on editorials, commentaries, and cartoons, it highlights the formation of views of the neighbor from the news that was…
G.A. Naqvi: From Indian Police (UP), 1926 to Pakistani Citizen (Sindh), 1947
This is the story of how G. A. Naqvi (Indian Police, 1926) of the United Province (UP) was affected by the events of 1947–1948 in British and independent India and Pakistan and had to become what he did not wish to be: a private citizen in Pakistan. It shows how he, like so many others, had to become reconciled to the idea of British India breaking-up into independent India and Pakistan. This process changed forever the relationship between insti…
Junagadh, India and the Logic of Occupation and Appropriation, 1947–49
This article shows the logic of occupation and appropriation that operated in the wake of the integration of the princely state of Junagadh to the dominion of India in November 1947. This re-created the ‘everyday’ state and society in Junagadh and triggered questions of loyalty of Indian Muslims and suspicions about their presence in the country. The old-new Indian state had a heavy-handed response in line with the newly majoritarian, nationalist…
A regional satrap, a Hindu nationalist and a conservative congressman: Dwarka Prasad Mishra (1901–1988)
DP Mishra, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh from 1963 to 1967 and twice minister in Central Provinces and Berar (1937–1939, 1946–1950), was a key figure in Congress politics and provincial governance from the pre- to the post-independence period in India. Mishra was a noted Patel acolyte and a vocal critic of Nehru. A Brahmin leader, he identified with an elite-based Hindu politics of caste and community. He was also an efficient administrator an…
The accession of Junagadh, 1947–48: Colonial sovereignty, state violence and post-independence India
By revisiting the events from July 1947 to February 1948 that comprised the accession of the princely state of Junagadh to India, this article gives an insight into the newly independent Dominion’s ‘mobilisation of violence’ in re-fashioning its sovereignty and authority. In doing so, it adds to the growing historical literature on state formation in India that argues that multiple crises of the period 1947–49—post-partition violence in Punjab an…
Mountbatten and India, 1948–64
This article brings to light Lord Mountbatten's continuing links with India after 1948 - a neglected aspect of his life and career. It probes his involvement and influence in Indian affairs through his personal relationships and professional experience. In doing so, it presents Mountbatten as the personification of the change in Indo-British ties from those of empire to dominion and beyond. On the three key issues of Hyderabad, arms sales, and Ka…
Great Britain and Kashmir, 1947–49
In 1953, a book on Jammu and Kashmir titled The Grim Saga (Dasgupta & Co. Ltd.) came out in Calcutta, India. Its author, S. N. Shivpuri, lamented “the triple tragedy of Kashmir–local, subcontinental and international.” Almost five decades since then, a great deal has been written about the local and subcontinental tragedy(s) in Kashmir. This article instead turns its gaze towards the international aspects that accompanied the evolution of the fir…
Great Britain and Kashmir, 1947–49
In 1953, a book on Jammu and Kashmir titled The Grim Saga (Dasgupta & Co. Ltd.) came out in Calcutta, India. Its author, S. N. Shivpuri, lamented “the triple tragedy of Kashmir–local, subcontinental and international.” Almost five decades since then, a great deal has been written about the local and subcontinental tragedy(s) in Kashmir. This article instead turns its gaze towards the international aspects that accompanied the evolution of the fir…
Britain and Kashmir, 1948: “The Arena of the UN”
The Jammu and Kashmir dispute of 1947–1949 between India and Pakistan became the first inter-state conflict to be discussed at the United Nations Security Council. This analysis looks at the views of the government and the delegation of Great Britain, one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, on Kashmir through the year of 1948. It argues that the British attitude was determined more by Imperial and Commonwealth strategic and ide…
Quaker Pacifist and Indian Politics: Horace Gundry Alexander and India, 1947–77
In the early days of the Cold War and Decolonisation in Asia, Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, proclaimed a world vision of neutralism (later called non-alignment) and anticolonialism. This ran counter to the Anglo-American anxieties regarding the spread of Communism in India and Asia. Despite the historical linkages, constitutional continuities and inter-governmental contacts relations between New Delhi and the West steadily deter…
Louis Fischer and India, 1947–1964: Gandhi’s Disciple, Nehru’s Bête Noire
This article focuses on the shift in the attitude of the liberal American journalist Louis Fischer to India. It contrasts Fischer’s admiration of Mahatma Gandhi and his support for Indian independence, expressed vociferously and prolifically in the period 1942-47, with Fischer’s criticisms and eventual opposition to the personality and foreign policy of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister. Going beyond Fischer’s reputation as a “friend…
Mountbatten and India, 1948–64
This article brings to light Lord Mountbatten's continuing links with India after 1948 - a neglected aspect of his life and career. It probes his involvement and influence in Indian affairs through his personal relationships and professional experience. In doing so, it presents Mountbatten as the personification of the change in Indo-British ties from those of empire to dominion and beyond. On the three key issues of Hyderabad, arms sales, and Ka…
Between Vanity and Sensitiveness: Indo–British Relations During Vijayalakshmi Pandit’s High-Commissionership (1954–61)
Studies of Indo–British relations in the 1950s have been usually dominated by the personalities of Jawaharlal Nehru and, after him, VK Krishna Menon. This article instead focuses on Vijayalakshmi Pandit and her tenure as India’s High-Commissioner in London. Pandit came to London having served as Nehru’s envoy to the Soviet Union, the USA and the United Nations. Based on government records and private papers in India, Britain and America, this art…
In the Twilight of Empire: Two Impressions of Britain and India at the United Nations, 1945–47
This article focuses on Indo-British interactions at the United Nations during 1945–47, a significant and hitherto overlooked episode of India's transition within the British Commonwealth from a colony to a dominion. In this twilight period of the British Raj, India sent its first delegations onto the international stage—forays that were critically received by London and subsequently employed to anticipate New Delhi's global role in post-1945 int…
Jayaprakash Narayan, Indian National Congress and Party Politics, 1934–1954
Jayaprakash Narayan, better remembered for his exploits in the Quit India movement of 1942, social work in the 1960s and his call for a ‘Total Revolution’ in 1974, was also a leading Congress socialist between 1934 and 1948, as well as active in non-Congress socialist politics till 1954. An admirer of Jawaharlal Nehru, he was a vocal critic of Vallabhbhai Patel. A radical with pronounced leftist tendencies, he was a bête noire of an elite-based p…
Janata Party (1974–77): Creation of an All-India Opposition
This article focuses on the interactions among four parties during 1974–77 that led to their combining to form the Janata Party, which represented a united opposition to the then Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi and her Congress government in January 1977. These inter-party exchanges remain an overlooked episode in the works on the Janata Party, when compared to its much written about the failure in government (1977–79). Forty years on, Janata Pa…
America, India, and Kashmir, 1945–49: “If Ignorance About India in This Country is Deep, Ignorance About the [Princely] States is Abysmal” 1
This analysis offers an alternative examination of American interest in India in the mid-1940s and situates the early American attitude to Kashmir into that matrix. The two years from 1945 to 1947, those of the emergence of decolonisation and the Cold War, critically influenced America’s attitude first towards India and then towards Kashmir. It has been commonplace to describe America’s early understanding of the Kashmir conflict as an issue unco…
A regional satrap, a Hindu nationalist and a conservative congressman: Dwarka Prasad Mishra (1901–1988)
DP Mishra, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh from 1963 to 1967 and twice minister in Central Provinces and Berar (1937–1939, 1946–1950), was a key figure in Congress politics and provincial governance from the pre- to the post-independence period in India. Mishra was a noted Patel acolyte and a vocal critic of Nehru. A Brahmin leader, he identified with an elite-based Hindu politics of caste and community. He was also an efficient administrator an…
The accession of Junagadh, 1947–48: Colonial sovereignty, state violence and post-independence India
By revisiting the events from July 1947 to February 1948 that comprised the accession of the princely state of Junagadh to India, this article gives an insight into the newly independent Dominion’s ‘mobilisation of violence’ in re-fashioning its sovereignty and authority. In doing so, it adds to the growing historical literature on state formation in India that argues that multiple crises of the period 1947–49—post-partition violence in Punjab an…
Marxist Guru , Socialist Neta , Buddhist Acharya , Gandhi’s Shishya: The many Narendra Deva(s) (1889–1956)
Narendra Deva has been variously called ‘the first Socialist ideologue of India’, ‘the most learned and leading exponent in India of Marxism’, ‘a true follower of Gandhi’ and a ‘founder, foremost, all-India figure of the CSP’. He is also remembered as a ‘renowned scholar of Buddhism’.11. See Jaffrelot, India’s Silent Revolution, 256; Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State, 38 and State Politics in India, 80; Weiner, Party Politics in India,…
Caste Politics in Bihar: In Historical Continuum
This article provides a long-term narrative of movements for social change in Bihar, precipitated by the steady rise to political power by the Backward Classes/Castes in the state, since 1989. Locating this moment in a longer momentum of struggle since the 1920s, it probes the antecedents of recent social change in Bihar politics. Contextualising this process within a long recessional, it traces a larger democratic cycle of empowerment going back…
G.A. Naqvi: From Indian Police (UP), 1926 to Pakistani Citizen (Sindh), 1947
This is the story of how G. A. Naqvi (Indian Police, 1926) of the United Province (UP) was affected by the events of 1947–1948 in British and independent India and Pakistan and had to become what he did not wish to be: a private citizen in Pakistan. It shows how he, like so many others, had to become reconciled to the idea of British India breaking-up into independent India and Pakistan. This process changed forever the relationship between insti…
Junagadh, India and the Logic of Occupation and Appropriation, 1947–49
This article shows the logic of occupation and appropriation that operated in the wake of the integration of the princely state of Junagadh to the dominion of India in November 1947. This re-created the ‘everyday’ state and society in Junagadh and triggered questions of loyalty of Indian Muslims and suspicions about their presence in the country. The old-new Indian state had a heavy-handed response in line with the newly majoritarian, nationalist…
Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah of Kashmir, 1965–1975: From Externment to Enthronement
Ousted as Premier, Jammu and Kashmir, in August 1953 and anointed as Chief Minister in February 1975, the so-called ‘Lion of Kashmir’ Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was imprisoned, in between these years, ultimately on charges of treason, with brief intermissions. Much has been written about the politics of Kashmir dispute, less so about the Sheikh and his personal troubles especially after the death of his friend Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964. This som…
State before Partition: India’s Interim Government under Wavell
This paper is a study of the Interim Government in British India, formed during the penultimate viceroyalty of Archibald Wavell, from September 1946 to March 1947. It tries to throw light on major and minor personalities and micro and macro processes at work in this improbable interlude and, thus, probes an overshadowed ministerial and bureaucratic set-up in the lead-up to Partition. This understudied set-up constituted yet another compelling ‘sp…
In the hands of a ‘secular state’: Meos in the aftermath of Partition, 1947–49
This article focuses on unpacking the workings of the independent Indian nation-state in the region of Mewat in the aftermath of Partition violence, particularly the state’s rendering of the Meo community there as a minority. This violence has been called a ‘rite of political and territorial passage’ and ‘systemic ethnic cleansing’ by scholars Shail Mayaram and Ian Copland, respectively. Building upon their works, this article focuses on state ac…
Dr. John Matthai (1886–1959): Between ‘Bombay Plan’ and ‘Planning Commission’
Dr John Matthai held key ministerial offices in New Delhi during a time of transition from pre- to post-independent India. He was Finance Minister twice (1946, 1948–50) and, in between, held the portfolios of Industry & Supply and Railway & Transport. Matthai had been an academic in Madras, an administrator with the central government and an economist in Bombay with the Tata group. His wide expertise and diverse experience brought him a range of …
India in The Pakistan Times , September 1950-February 1951
This article offers a glimpse of the representation of India in The Pakistan Times in 1950–51, in the last months of the first phase of its editorship by Faiz Ahmed Faiz. It contextualizes this reflection in a period of relative lull, marked by pacts on minorities and trade, within the post-Partition upheaval. Focusing especially on editorials, commentaries, and cartoons, it highlights the formation of views of the neighbor from the news that was…
Bearing ‘financial responsibility’ for the Government and the Party: C.D. Deshmukh (1950–56) & T.T. Krishnamachari (1956–58)
Of the 17 years (1946–64) Jawaharlal Nehru was India's Prime Minister, his Congress Party government had a senior politician holding the Finance Ministry for only 5: Morarji Desai (1958–63). Otherwise, this crucial portfolio was held by a succession of experts; an illustration of consociational power sharing. This article is about two of those, C.D. Deshmukh and T.T. Krishnamachari, and some of their chequered governmental experiences. Through th…
Lal Bahadur Shastri, 1964–1966: Leader at a Glance
Lal Bahadur Shastri has been recently recalled as ‘the original accidental Prime Minister’ and ‘architect of India’s real surgical strike’. His sudden death has lately been the subject of a film, The Tashkent Files (2019) and a book, Your Prime Minister is Dead (2018). A memorial to him is the Government of India’s National Academy of Administration, named after him since 1972. And yet, there is less written on him directly, as against approachin…
Mountbatten and India, 1964-79: After Nehru
This article throws light on Lord Mountbatten’s enduring involvement in India after 1964, an overlooked feature of his later life. On a number of issues such as the abolition of titles, privileges and privy purses of Indian Princes (1967–71), imposition of Emergency in India (1975), arms sales, expulsion of BBC (1970–72) and evolution of history-writing on Partition, this article evaluates his changing role as a ‘friend of India’ in Britain, whil…
Jayaprakash Narayan and Indira Gandhi, 1966–74: Before the Rivalry
When the Gandhian Jayaprakash Narayan (JP) gave the clarion call of Total Revolution, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi responded heavy-handedly by imposing the Emergency in India in 1974–5. This all-encompassing duel has dominated politics and political scholarship since. Their domestic clash has established many analytical prisms for the contemporary public sphere in India, particularly personality politics versus people’s power, single party versus…
Political science (36 works) · Law (35 works) · Law (32 works) · Politics (31 works) · History (30 works) · History (27 works) · South Asian Studies and Conflicts (24 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East (16 works) · Ancient history (15 works)