Scholar Sandipto Dasgupta's new book, Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony explores India's post-colonial development and institutional reform. He joins Milan this week to share key takeaways from his book and the post-colonial era's lasting impact on India.
Anticolonial movements of the 20th century generated audacious ideas of freedom. After decolonization, however, the challenge was to give an institutional form to those radical ideas.
Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony is a new book by the scholar Sandipto Dasgupta which provides an innovative account of how India ultimately addressed this daunting challenge.
It's a fresh, somewhat revisionist look at the making of the postcolonial constitutional order and tries to place the current crisis of liberal democracy in proper historical and conceptual context.
Sandipto is an assistant professor of politics at the New School for Social Research, where he works on the history of modern political and social thought, especially the political theory of empire, decolonization, and postcolonial order.
To talk more about his book, Sandipto joins Milan on the podcast this week. They discuss the two-way relationship between decolonization and constitution-making, the absence of representation unity between the Congress Party and the masses, and why India’s leaders believed a planned economy would forestall a social revolution. Plus, the two discuss how the absence—rather than the excesses—of democracy have led to rising majoritarianism.
Episode notes:
1. “Republic Day Episode: Madhav Khosla on India’s Founding Moment,” Grand Tamasha, January 28, 2020.
2. Sandipto Dasgupta, “Gandhi’s Failure: Anticolonial Movements,” Perspectives on Politics 15, no. 3 (2017).
3. Sandipto Dasgupta, “‘A Language Which Is Foreign to Us’: Continuities and Anxieties in the Making of the Indian Constitution,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 34, no. 2 (2014): 228–242.
Carnegie does not take institutional positions on public policy issues; the views represented herein are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of Carnegie, its staff, or its trustees.
This week, Rahul Sagar join Milan to discuss his new book The Birth of Indian Liberalism: Mama Parmanand’s Letters to an Indian Raja, which uncovers an older tradition of Indian liberal thought through a remarkable work first published in 1891 and then largely forgotten for more than a century.
Milan Vaishnav, Rahul Sagar
This week, Rohit De and Ornit Shani join Milan to discuss their new book Assembling India’s Constitution: A New Democratic History. Drawing on a remarkable range of archival material, the book shows that constitution-making was not confined to the halls of the Constituent Assembly alone.
Milan Vaishnav, Ornit Shani, Rohit De
Milan Vaishnav and Tanul Thakur discuss Tanul's new book "Wild Wild East: Exiled Americans, Enslaved Indians and the Systemic Abuse of the H-1B Visa Programme."
Milan Vaishnav, Tanul Thakur
Discussing their new short book, Indian Public Opinion toward the Major Powers, Paul Staniland, and Aidan Milliff join Milan Vaishnav to discuss the treasure trove of data on Indian public opinion they stumbled upon, the characteristics of India’s “foreign policy public,” and the variation in Indian attitudes toward the United States, China, and Russia/the Soviet Union. Plus, the discuss why a respondent’s region emerges as a strong predictor of one’s foreign policy views.
Milan Vaishnav, Paul Staniland, Aidan Milliff
Host Milan Vaishnav and Ambassador May-Elin Stener discuss the outcomes of the India-Nordic summit, the Trade and Economic Partnership Agreement (TEPA), and the green technology partnership Norway envisions with India.
Milan Vaishnav, May-Elin Stener
