Decolonisation and the politics of transition in South Asia / edited by Sekhar Bandyopadhyay.

Contributed articles.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 398-421) and index.

Contents: Introduction/Sekhar Bandyopadhyay. I. Independence and Partition: 1.Azadi, Batwara or Vibhajan: What Happened on 14 15 August 1947 in the Indian Subcontinent?/Gyanesh Kudaisya. 2. Partition and Independence in Delhi: 1947 48/Gyanendra Pandey. 3.Picking up the Pieces: Pakistan, 1947 49/Ian Talbot. II. Democracy, Development and Politics: 1. The Road Not Taken : Sir Benegal Narsing Rau and the Indian Constitution/Arvind Elangovan. 2.Democracy s Biggest Gamble: India s First Free Elections in 1952/Ramachandra Guha. 3. In the Name of Politics : Sovereignty, Democracy and the Multitude in India/Dipesh Chakrabarty 4.India: The Road to the First Five-Year Plan/Benjamin Zachariah. 5.State and the Making of Communist Politics in India, 1947 57/Javeed Alam.III. Community, Citizenship and Conflict: 1.The Crisis of Hindu Nationalism in Post-Partition India, 1947 52/Sekhar Bandyopadhyay. 2.B. R. Ambedkar and Indian Democracy/Anupama Rao. 3.The Assassination of Gandhi and the Early Signs of Crisis in Muslim Nationalism in East Pakistan/A. H. Ahmed Kamal. 4.Religion and Language in the Formation of Nationhood in Pakistan and Bangladesh/Tanveer Fazal. 5. Muslim Politics in Postcolonial India: Sources, Ideas, Issues and Norms/Hilal Ahmed. 6. The Jewel of the East Yet has its Flaws : The Deceptive Tranquillity surrounding Sri Lankan Independence/Harshan Kumarasingham. Bibliography. Index. This volume interrogates the concept of decolonisation, which is often taken to mean a transfer of power from a colonial to an indigenous elite. However, decolonisation involved a much more complex historical experience for the people of the postcolonial nations. It did not necessarily mean a clinical break with the past, but was rather an incomplete, complicated process, as different groups began to seek different meanings of freedom and imagined multiple pathways for their future development. Old nationalisms were questioned and new identities were born, as fresh boundaries were drawn, both geographically and socially. This book captures some of these complexities of the decolonisation process in South Asia across India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh by focusing on these uncertainties and debates of the transition period from colonial to the postcolonial. The essays engage with a range of issues related to decolonisation, including electoral systems, forms of political systems, democracy and authoritarianism, economic planning, armed insurrection, ideological consensus and conflict, minority rights and exclusivist politics