Congress and Indian nationalism : the pre-independence phase
Material type: TextPublication details: Berkeley : University of California Press, c1988Description: x, 420 pISBN: 0520060415 (alk. paper)Subject(s): NationalismDDC classification: 324.2540309 Summary: Seventeen distinguished historians and political scientists discuss the phenomenon of Indian Nationalism, one hundred years after the founding of the Congress party. They offer important new interpretations of Nationalism’s evolution during more than six decades of crucial change and rapid growth. As India’s foremost political institution, the National Congress with its changing fortunes mirrored Indian aspirations, ideals, dreams, and failures during the country’s struggle for nationhood. Many difficulties faced by the pre-independence Indian National Congress are critically examined for the first time in this volume. Major times of crisis and transition are considered, as well as the tension between mass action and political control, and the problem of creating and maintaining unity in the face of divisive social and economic interests and between deeply hostile religious communities. A composite portrait of the Congress Party emerges. We see a coalition of often conflicting communities and interests much like India itself, struggling to stay together, tenuously united by little more at times than a common “enemy,” the imperial British Raj. But linked together in precarious, seemingly haphazard fashion, shifting networks of elite political entrepreneurs manage to keep India’s National Congress alive. They kept it alive long enough to convince the British that it would be easier to “Quit India” than to try to hang onto it by force. With the abrupt transfer of power from the British to the independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947, Congress provided institutional sinews for the administration of what had been British India and over 500 Princely States. By contributing to a deeper understanding of India’s nationalist experience, this volume may illuminate the experience of other Third World states. Contributors S. Bhattacharya Judith M. Brown Mushirul Hasan Zoya Hasan D.A. Low Claude Markovits John R. McLane W.H. Morris-Jones Gyanendra Pandey Bimal Prasad Rajat Kanta Ray Barbara N. Ramusack Peter D. Reeves Hitesranjan Sanyal Richard Sisson Stanley Wolpert Eleanor ZelliotItem type | Current library | Call number | Status | Date due | Barcode |
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BK | Stack | 324.2540309 CON (Browse shelf (Opens below)) | Available | 52166 |
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324.254 PRA/I Ideology and identity : the changing party systems of India | 324.25403 AND/B The brotherhood in saffron : the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and Hindu revivalism | 324.25403 IQB/I.1 The Indian National Congress : a reconstruction | 324.2540309 CON Congress and Indian nationalism : the pre-independence phase | 324.25407 SON/I Indian socialists: search for identity | 324.254075 DIP/U Understanding CPI M :will the Indian left survive | 324.254075 GEO/R Rebels from the mud houses : Dalits and the making of the Maoist revolution in Bihar |
Rev. versions of papers presented at an international conference, held in March 1984 at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Seventeen distinguished historians and political scientists discuss the phenomenon of Indian Nationalism, one hundred years after the founding of the Congress party. They offer important new interpretations of Nationalism’s evolution during more than six decades of crucial change and rapid growth. As India’s foremost political institution, the National Congress with its changing fortunes mirrored Indian aspirations, ideals, dreams, and failures during the country’s struggle for nationhood. Many difficulties faced by the pre-independence Indian National Congress are critically examined for the first time in this volume. Major times of crisis and transition are considered, as well as the tension between mass action and political control, and the problem of creating and maintaining unity in the face of divisive social and economic interests and between deeply hostile religious communities. A composite portrait of the Congress Party emerges. We see a coalition of often conflicting communities and interests much like India itself, struggling to stay together, tenuously united by little more at times than a common “enemy,” the imperial British Raj. But linked together in precarious, seemingly haphazard fashion, shifting networks of elite political entrepreneurs manage to keep India’s National Congress alive. They kept it alive long enough to convince the British that it would be easier to “Quit India” than to try to hang onto it by force. With the abrupt transfer of power from the British to the independent Dominions of India and Pakistan in 1947, Congress provided institutional sinews for the administration of what had been British India and over 500 Princely States. By contributing to a deeper understanding of India’s nationalist experience, this volume may illuminate the experience of other Third World states. Contributors S. Bhattacharya Judith M. Brown Mushirul Hasan Zoya Hasan D.A. Low Claude Markovits John R. McLane W.H. Morris-Jones Gyanendra Pandey Bimal Prasad Rajat Kanta Ray Barbara N. Ramusack Peter D. Reeves Hitesranjan Sanyal Richard Sisson Stanley Wolpert Eleanor Zelliot
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