Organised by:
American Institute of Indian Studies
Conference Schedule
Abstract:
Scholarly re-evaluations of the political in India’s twentieth century have been prompted in relation both to new contemporary realities and new historical research. These have resulted in, at least, two critical re-appraisals. The first is the challenge to the still dominant nation-state imaginary that informs studies of this period. The latter has resulted in drowning out, or rendering anachronistic, other political imaginaries. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more apparent than in the equation of decolonization with the creation of the nation-state or in the subsumption of anti-colonialism in nationalism. One set of questions that we explore, therefore, is the variety of political imaginaries of the empire and nation and of citizenship and subject that animated politics in late colonial India. The second major re-appraisal comes from new appreciation of the particular post-colonial forms of democracy that sit uneasily with the genealogy of liberal democracy in the West. This challenge is best captured in Partha Chatterjee’s re-reading of democracy not as “government of the people,” as republican cliché would have it, but, rather, as “the politics of the governed.” By this token, then, squatters on public lands or illegal users of water and electricity are not tangential to the understanding of proper democratic politics; but, rather, in making use of democratic politics to make their demands heard, these groups represent examples of democratic forms in post-colonial societies. This expanded understanding of democratic politics is the second major theme of the conference.
Date: January 10-11, 2014
Time: 09:00 A.M.
Venue: January 10, 2014
Seminar Hall#3
India International Centre,
Indian International Centre
40, Max Mueller Marg,
New Delhi-110003(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
Venue: January 11, 2014
Seminar Hall
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library,
Teen Murthi House
New Delhi-110011(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
American Institute of Indian Studies
Conference Schedule
Abstract:
Scholarly re-evaluations of the political in India’s twentieth century have been prompted in relation both to new contemporary realities and new historical research. These have resulted in, at least, two critical re-appraisals. The first is the challenge to the still dominant nation-state imaginary that informs studies of this period. The latter has resulted in drowning out, or rendering anachronistic, other political imaginaries. Nowhere, perhaps, is this more apparent than in the equation of decolonization with the creation of the nation-state or in the subsumption of anti-colonialism in nationalism. One set of questions that we explore, therefore, is the variety of political imaginaries of the empire and nation and of citizenship and subject that animated politics in late colonial India. The second major re-appraisal comes from new appreciation of the particular post-colonial forms of democracy that sit uneasily with the genealogy of liberal democracy in the West. This challenge is best captured in Partha Chatterjee’s re-reading of democracy not as “government of the people,” as republican cliché would have it, but, rather, as “the politics of the governed.” By this token, then, squatters on public lands or illegal users of water and electricity are not tangential to the understanding of proper democratic politics; but, rather, in making use of democratic politics to make their demands heard, these groups represent examples of democratic forms in post-colonial societies. This expanded understanding of democratic politics is the second major theme of the conference.
Date: January 10-11, 2014
Time: 09:00 A.M.
Venue: January 10, 2014
Seminar Hall#3
India International Centre,
Indian International Centre
40, Max Mueller Marg,
New Delhi-110003(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
Venue: January 11, 2014
Seminar Hall
Nehru Memorial Museum and Library,
Teen Murthi House
New Delhi-110011(INDIA)
Location:
View Larger Map
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