Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India–Pakistan Relationship, 1947–52 by Pallavi Raghavan, HarperCollins Publishers India, 2020, pp 288, ₹699.
India in the Interregnum: Interim GovernmentSeptember 1946–August 1947 by Rakesh Ankit, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2019; pp xii + 376, ₹1,195.
The issue of the national language was one of the most contentious and passionately debated ones by members of the Constituent Assembly. The significance of this debate lies in the way the members imagined India as a nation, articulated regional and linguistic identities, and sought to build unity of purpose to lay the foundations of modern India. The debates revealed a divide between North and South India, and took on communal undertones too. The eventual choice of Hindi could be pushed through due to the numerical strength of the supporters of the language. This paper will unravel the varying standpoints of participants in this debate.
The domicile law introduced in the newly created union territory of Jammu and Kashmir has aggravated the already deteriorating situation. The policy is a result of a historical, political and policy myopia of the current dispensation, which has failed to understand the significance of the earlier permanent residency laws for different communities across the erstwhile state of J&K. It has evoked fear of demographic change, loss of economic and cultural rights and has engineered profound changes in the political structure of the region.
Who Is Bharat Mata? On History, Culture and the Idea of India: Writings by and on Jawaharlal Nehru, edited and with an introduction by Purushottam Agrawal, Speaking Tiger, New Delhi, 2019; pp 474, ₹359.
TheOctober Revolution of 1917profoundly influenced the course of the Indian freedom movement in multiple ways. It gave “impetus to Indian political aspirations,” widened the base of the freedom struggle by making industrial workers and peasants active participants, and endowed the movement with a progressive outlook. The revolution’s principles resonated deeply among the people and leaders of the Indian freedom movement. In fact, many of the values enshrined in our Constitution, adopted post independence, were inspired by the lofty ideals of the Russian Revolution.
Jawaharlal Nehru’s views on religion and secularism, indeed even his considered political practice, were very different from the Nehruvian secularism that emerged soon after his death, a handiwork of intellectuals close to his daughter, Indira Gandhi. It is an argument of this paper that Nehruvian views on secularism must give way to Nehru’s own views on the matter which have great relevance today.
India's Constitution has been amended over a hundred times since its inception in 1950. The landmark amendments are discussed with special emphasis on the first amendment, which altered the way the freedom of speech and expression was originally understood by the framers of the Constitution.
The ideology central to the Bharatiya Janata Party-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh has no space or use for liberal thought and values. Education for such organisations means only what can be called a kind of catechism. This is a memorisation of a narrow set of questions rooted in faith and belief and an equally narrow set of answers that prohibit any doubt or deviation. Therefore, educational centres that allow questioning and discussion are anathema and have to be dismantled.
