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Negotiating Postcoloniality: History and Politics of Independent India

Module description

The module provides you with an in-depth understanding of modern India, tracing its journey from colonisation to a rising power. Regarded as the world’s largest democracy, India has faced several challenges on many fronts: social, cultural, political, and economic. The module follows those challenges through scholarly debates, visual representations, and empirical material to engender critical inquiry into understanding India as a postcolonial 'nation-state'. Topics include Independence and the trauma of Partition, democracy and diversity, secularism, casteism, and communalism, social movements and insurgencies, foreign relations and diaspora, cricket and cultural productions. The module encourages you to look critically at the processes of state and nation building in India since it achieved Independence in 1947. Through everyday experiences of different groups and within the many socio-cultural, political, and economic contexts, the module introduces you to the deep diversities (ethnic, caste, linguistic and religious) within the Indian model of democracy and secularism. Studying specific events shaping identities, hierarchies and resistance, the module will attempt to go beyond the official and dominant historiography to raise critical questions regarding security and militarisation, representation and inequality, economic liberalisation and exploitation, development, and displacement.

Module aims - intentions of the module

You will acquire an analytical and methodological training to evaluate debates and discourses with respect to India, to undertake research on India and gain a perspective into the postcolonial order and the global South. Although no prior knowledge is required, you are recommended to follow events in India through news, literature, or popular culture. The module is suitable for non-specialist and specialist students studying History, Politics, and Human Geography who are interested in non-Western, inter-disciplinary approaches.

Intended Learning Outcomes (ILOs)

ILO: Module-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 1. Demonstrate in-depth regional knowledge about the social, political and economic realities of India.
• 2. Demonstrate analytical skills and critical awareness of the Indian model of democracy, secularism and multiculturalism and distinguish it from more dominant Western models.

ILO: Discipline-specific skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 3. Critically engage with various interdisciplinary approaches including history, politics and international relations, sociology, culture studies, literature, anthropology, film studies etc.
• 4. Apply empirical evidence to theoretical approaches in the form of written and oral presentations

ILO: Personal and key skills

On successfully completing the module you will be able to...

• 5. Develop flexibility in thinking and researching.
• 6. Communicate political and historical arguments comprehensively and coherently.

Syllabus plan

Whilst the content may vary from year to year, it is envisioned that it will cover some or all of the following topics:

• ‘The Imaginary Institution of India’: Whose history and by whom?]
• ‘Tryst with destiny’: Independence and Partition
• ‘The Unnatural Nation’: Constructing postcolonial India
• The Indian Model: Contextualising democracy and secularism
• ‘Gandhiji, I have no homeland’: Understanding caste and inequality
• ‘The Violence of Normal Times’: Gender and Minorities
• ‘Everybody Loves a Good Drought’: Development and endangered livelihoods
• Contesting the State: Terror and counter-terror
• ‘Self-fashioning and worlding’: India and the World
• Diaspora, Cinema and Cricket

Learning activities and teaching methods (given in hours of study time)

Details of learning activities and teaching methods

Formative assessment

Summative assessment (% of credit)

Details of summative assessment

Details of re-assessment (where required by referral or deferral)

Re-assessment notes

Deferral – if you miss an assessment for certificated reasons judged acceptable by the Mitigation Committee, you will normally be either deferred in the assessment or an extension may be granted. The mark given for a re-assessment taken as a result of deferral will not be capped and will be treated as it would be if it were your first attempt at the assessment.

Referral – if you have failed the module overall (i.e. a final overall module mark of less than 40%) you will be required to submit a further assessment as necessary. If you are successful on referral, your overall module mark will be capped at 40%.

Indicative learning resources - Basic reading

Basic reading:

• Abraham, Itty. "From Bandung to NAM: Non-Alignment and Indian Foreign Policy, 1947–65."  Commonwealth & Comparative Politics  46, no. 2 (2008): 195-219.
• Akoijam, A. Bimol. "Another 9/11, another Act of Terror: the Embedded Disorder of the AFSPA."  Sarai Reader 2005: Bare Acts (2005): 481-91.
• Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji.  Annihilation of caste: an undelivered speech . Arnold Publishers, 1990.
• Arya, Sunaina, and Aakash Singh Rathore, eds. Dalit feminist theory: A reader. Taylor & Francis, 2019.
• Asif, Manan Ahmed. The Loss of Hindustan. Harvard University Press, 2020.
• Butalia, Urvashi.  The other side of silence: Voices from the partition of India . Duke University Press, 2000. (selections)
• Chakraborty, Chandrima. "Subaltern Studies, Bollywood and" Lagaan"."  Economic and Political Weekly  (2003): 1879-1884.
• Devji, Faisal Fatehali. "Hindu/Muslim/Indian."  Public Culture  5, no. 1 (1992): 1-18.
• Guha, Ramachandra.  India after Gandhi: The history of the world's largest democracy . Pan Macmillan, 2017 (selections).
• Jangam, Chinnaiah. Dalits and the Making of Modern India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press. 2017.
• Kannabiran, Kalpana. "The Violence of normal times: Essays on women’s lived realities."  Women Unlimited, New Delhi (2005) (selections).
• Kaviraj, Sudipta. "The imaginary institution of India."  Occasional Paper  5 (2014): 41-64.
• Khan, Yasmin. "South Asia: From Colonial Categories to a Crisis of Faith?."  The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, The  (2011): 367-378.
• Khan, Yasmin. The Great Partition: The making of India and Pakistan. Yale University Press, 2017.
• Krishna, Sankaran. "Queering the pitch: race, class, gender and nation in the Indo-Australian encounter."  Postcolonial Studies 18, no. 2 (2015): 161-173.
• Krishna, Sankaran.  Postcolonial insecurities: India, Sri Lanka, and the question of nationhood . Vol. 15. U of Minnesota Press, 1999. (Chapter 1)
• Mannathukkaren, Nissim. "Subalterns, Cricket and the 'Nation': The Silences of 'Lagaan'."  Economic and Political Weekly (2001): 4580-4588.
• Manto, Saadat Hasan.  Toba Tek Singh . Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 2017.
• Menon, Nivedita. "Sexuality, caste, governmentality: contests over ‘gender’ in India."  Feminist Review  91, no. 1 (2009): 94-112.
• Nandy, Ashis, ed. The secret politics of our desires: innocence, culpability and Indian popular cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, 1998.
• Peer, Basharat.  Curfewed Night . Random House India, 2011.
• Ph?m, Qu?nh N., and Robbie Shilliam, eds. Meanings of Bandung: Postcolonial orders and decolonial visions. Rowman & Littlefield, 2016.
• Prakash, Gyan. "Writing post-orientalist histories of the Third World: perspectives from Indian historiography." Comparative studies in society and history 32, no. 2 (1990): 383-408.
• Roy, Srirupa.  Beyond belief: India and the politics of postcolonial nationalism . Duke University Press, 2007 (selections).
• Stepan, Alfred, Juan J. Linz, and Yogendra Yadav.  Crafting state-nations: India and other multinational democracies . JHU Press, 2011 (Selections).
• Sundar, Nandini. "Insurgency, counter-insurgency, and democracy in central India."  More than Maoism: Politics, policies and insurgencies in South Asia. New Delhi: Manohar Publishers  (2012).
• Varadarajan, Latha.  The domestic abroad: Diasporas in international relations . Oxford University Press, 2010 (selections).
• Yengde, Suraj. Caste Matters. Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 2019.
• Zamindar, Vazira Fazila-Yacoobali.  The long Partition and the making of modern South Asia: refugees, boundaries, histories . Columbia University Press, 2007. (selections)

Indicative learning resources - Web based and electronic resources

• ELE – https://vle.exeter.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=1748

Indicative learning resources - Other resources

Suggested Films

• Khamosh Pani. directed by Sabiha Sumar. (2004)
• Meghe Dhaka Tara, directed by Ritwik Ghatak (1960)
• Masaan, directed by Neeraj Ghaywan (2007)
• Pariyerum Perumal, directed by Mari Selvaraj (2018)
• The Great Indian Kitchen, directed by Jeo Baby (2021)
• Nero’s Guests. directed by Deepa Bhatia (2009).
• Kashmir’s Torture Trail. UK Channel 4 Documentary (2012).
• Lagaan. directed by Ashutosh Gowarikar. (2001).

Key words search

India, Partition, Independence, Democracy, Postcolonialism, Caste