This book is an exploration of the rich, variegated, and intimate history of revolution as praxis.

“An engaging, innovative, and wide-ranging account of the way in which anticolonial thought in India creatively reconceptualized the idea of popular sovereignty. It sheds new light on the theoretical relationship between democratic legitimation and development.” —Pratap Bhanu Mehta An original reconstruction of how the debates over peoplehood defined Indian anticolonial thought, and a bold new framework for theorizing the global career of democracy. Indians, their former British rulers asserted, were unfit to rule themselves. Behind this assertion lay a foundational claim about the absence of peoplehood in India. The purported “backwardness” of Indians as a people led to a democratic legitimation of empire, justifying self-government at home and imperial rule in the colonies. In response, Indian anticolonial thinkers launched a searching critique of the modern ideal of peoplehood. Waiting for the People is the first account of Indian answers to the question of peoplehood in political theory. From Surendranath Banerjea and Radhakamal Mukerjee to Mohandas Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Indian political thinkers passionately explored the fraught theoretical space between sovereignty and government. In different ways, Indian anticolonial thinkers worked to address the developmental assumptions built into the modern problem of peoplehood, scrutinizing contemporary European definitions of “the people” and the assumption that a unified peoplehood was a prerequisite for self-government. Nazmul Sultan demonstrates how the anticolonial reckoning with the ideal of popular sovereignty fostered novel insights into the globalization of democracy and ultimately drove India’s twentieth-century political transformation. Waiting for the People excavates, at once, the alternative forms and trajectories proposed for India’s path to popular sovereignty and the intellectual choices that laid the foundation for postcolonial democracy. In so doing, it uncovers largely unheralded Indian contributions to democratic theory at large. India’s effort to reconfigure the relationship between popular sovereignty and self-government proves a key event in the global history of political thought, one from which a great deal remains to be learned.

In popular imagination, Lala Lajpat Rai is frequently associated with Bhagat Singh, who, by assassinating J.P. Saunders, avenged Rai’s death, caused by a police lathi charge, and was hanged for it. Lajpat Rai is also remembered for his fervent opposition to British rule. In recent decades, however, historians have converged with the Hindu Right in rediscovering Lajpat Rai as an ideological ancestor of Hindutva. But what then explains Rai’s wholehearted approval of Congress–Muslim League cooperation, and attempt to endow Hindus and Muslims with bonds of common belonging? Why did he reinterpret India’s medieval history to highlight peaceful coexistence between Hindus and Muslims? Have our hasty conclusions about Lajpat Rai’s nationalist thought concealed its complexities and distorted our understanding of nationalism in general? Meticulously researched and eloquently written, Being Hindu, Being Indian offers the first comprehensive examination of Lajpat Rai’s nationalist thought. By revealing the complexities of Rai’s thinking, it provokes us to think more deeply about broader questions relevant to present-day politics: Are all expressions of ‘Hindu nationalism’ the same as Hindutva? What are the similarities and differences between ‘Hindu’ and ‘Indian’ nationalism? Can communalism and secularism be expressed together? How should we understand fluidity in politics? This book invites readers to treat Lajpat Rai’s ideas as a gateway to think more deeply about history, politics, religious identity and nationhood.

Includes section "Reviews and notices of books".

Dennis Dalton's classic account of Gandhi's political and intellectual development focuses on the leader's two signal triumphs: the civil disobedience movement (or salt satyagraha) of 1930 and the Calcutta fast of 1947. Dalton clearly demonstrates how Gandhi's lifelong career in national politics gave him the opportunity to develop and refine his ideals. He then concludes with a comparison of Gandhi's methods and the strategies of Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, drawing a fascinating juxtaposition that enriches the biography of all three figures and asserts Gandhi's relevance to the study of race and political leadership in America. Dalton situates Gandhi within the "clash of civilizations" debate, identifying the implications of his work on continuing nonviolent protests. He also extensively reviews Gandhian studies and adds a detailed chronology of events in Gandhi's life.

"How has the participation of women in Hindu nationalist politics in India changed over time, and what has their changing participation meant for women, for Hindu nationalism, and for Indian democracy? In the wake of the BJP's consolidation of power after the 2019 election, Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated places women's participation in religious politics in India into historical and comparative perspective to understand the critical role of women and gender in the movement's rise and how it has evolved over time. Marginalized, Mobilized, Incorporated draws on significant new data sources, gathered over a decade of fieldwork in India, including newly uncovered archival documents on a women's wing of the Hindu Mahasabha; interviews with key BJP leaders; and ethnographic observation, voting data, and visual campaign materials. I compare three critical time periods to show how Hindu nationalism has increasingly involved women in its politics over time. In its formative years in the early 1900s, Hindu nationalism marginalized women; in the 1980s the BJP mobilized them; and today, the BJP has incorporated women into its structures and activities. Incorporating women into Hindu nationalist politics has significantly advanced the BJP's electoral success compared to prior periods when women were marginalized or mobilized in more limited ways. For the BJP, women's incorporation works to normalize religious nationalism in Indian democracy; however, incorporation has not been emancipatory for women, whose participation in BJP politics remains predicated on traditional gender ideologies that tether women to their social roles in the home and family"--

What did everyday Hinduism in India look like a hundred years ago? Were its practices more varied and less politically curtailed than now? Hindi Hindu Histories provides illuminating historical accounts of Hindu life through individual actors, autobiographical narratives, and genres in the Hindi print-public culture of early twentieth-century North India. It focuses on four fascinating figures: a successful woman doctor in the Indigenous medical regime, a globe-trotting Hindu ascetic who opposed Gandhi, an anticaste campaigner who spoke for sexual equality, and a Hindu communist who envisioned an egalitarian utopia in the world of labor. These public intellectuals harbored vernacular dreams of freedom and Hindi-Hindu nationhood through their vantage points of caste, Ayurveda, travel, and communism. Opening up a vast and under-explored Hindi archive, this book presents a dynamic spectacle of a plural Hindi-Hindu universe of facets that coexisted, challenged each other, and comprised an idea of Hinduness far more inclusive than anything conceivable in the present moment.

Gandhi's nationalism seems simple and straightforward: he wanted an independent Indian nation-state and freedom from British colonial rule. But in reality his nationalism rested on complex and sophisticated moral philosophy. His Indian state and nation were based on no shallow ethnic or religious communalism, despite his claim to be Hindu to his very core, but were grounded on his concept of swaraj - enlightened self-control and self-development leading to harmony and tolerance among all communities in the new India. He aimed at moral regeneration, not just the ending of colonial rule. Simone Panter-Brick's perceptive and original portrayal of Gandhi's nationalism analyses his spiritual and political programme. She follows his often tortuous path as a principal, spiritual and political leader of the Indian Congress, through his famous campaigns of non-violent resistance and negotiations with the Government of India leading to Independence and, sadly for Gandhi, the Partition in 1947. Gandhi's nationalism was, in Wm. Roger Louis's phrase, 'larger than the struggle forindependence'. He sought a tolerant and unified state that included all communities within a 'Mother India'. Panter-Brick's work will be essential reading for all scholars and students of Indian history and political ideas.