<< This syllabus was prepared for the students of the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS). Due to my appointment (fall 2018) to the Centre de Sciences Humaines (CSH), the course was not taught.

This course is an introduction to the foundational questions surrounding the study of contemporary India. It aims at providing first year MA students with the critical “interpretations” of India in the various disciplines of social science such as political science, sociology, social Anthropology, history, political geography, political economy and international relations. By considering the implications of the varied ways in which India is “seen,” students will be equipped with the analytical tools to design a critical research framework for an eventual undergraduate dissertation. By the end of the semester they will be able to locate their own work in the wider scholarship though interrogating the legacies of orientalism, post-colonialism and area studies on the representations of India. In order to address these contemporary epistemological issues, the course will interrogate India’s democratic trajectory – as well as its secular and federal character

– while introducing some of the developments affecting it: the rise of Hindu nationalism, the practice of grassroots and ‘muscle’ politics, the democratic disbelief of wealthy Indians, and the disarray of India’s weaker sections – peasants, tribals, former untouchables etc. Core readings for each session are marked with a star (*).

Session 1. ‘Interpretations’ of India: From Colonialism to Present Day

* Anderson, B., 1991. Census, Map, Museum. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, revised edition, Verso, London, pp.163-185.

Appadurai, A., 1993. Number in the colonial imagination in C. Breckenridge and P. Van der Veer (eds.), Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, pp.314-339.

Butalia, Urvashi. Women. The other side of silence: Voices from the partition of India. Duke University Press, 2000, pp.85-137.

Cohn, B.S., 1987. The Census, Social Structure and Objectification in South Asia in Culture and History of India in An Anthropologist Among the Historians, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, pp.224-254.

Deaton, A. and Kozel, V., 2005. Data and dogma: the great Indian poverty debate. The World Bank Research Observer, 20(2).

* Dirks, N.B., 2011. Castes of mind: Colonialism and the making of modern India. Princeton University Press, pp.3-18. Kabir, A.J., 2009. Territory of desire: Representing the valley of Kashmir. U of Minnesota Press, pp.31-107

Kapila, S., 2007. Race matters: orientalism and religion, India and beyond c. 1770–1880. Modern Asian Studies, 41(3), pp.471-513. Khilnani, S., 1999. The idea of India. Penguin Books India. Chapters 1 and 2.

Inden, R.B., 2010. Knowledge of India and Human Agency. Imagining India. Indiana University Press.

Rudolph, S.H., 2005. The imperialism of categories: situating knowledge in a globalizing world. Pers. on Politics, 3(1), pp.5-14.

Shah, A., 2010. Night Escape: Eco-incarceration, Purity, and Sex. In the shadows of the state: Indigenous politics, environmentalism, and insurgency in Jharkhand, India. Duke University Press.

Wilkinson, S., 2003. Social cleavages and electoral competition in India. India Review, 2(4), pp.31-42.

Session 2. Representing India: From Orientalism to Area Studies

Ahuja, A., Ostermann, S.L. and Mehta, A., 2016. Is Only Fair Lovely in Indian Politics? Consequences of Skin Color in a Survey Experiment in Delhi. Journal of Race, Ethnicity and Politics, 1(2), pp.227-252.

Appadurai, A., 1986. Is homo hierarchicus?. American ethnologist, 13(4), pp.745-761.

Van der Veer, P., 1993. The Foreign Hand: Orientalist Discourse in Sociology and Communalism. Breckenridge, Carol A., and Peter Van der Veer, eds. Orientalism and the postcolonial predicament: Perspectives on South Asia. Uni. of Pennsylvania Press.

Chatterjee, P., 1998. Community in the East. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.277-282.

* Dumont, L., 1980. Hierarchy: The Theory of the ‘Varna’. Homo hierarchicus. University of Chicago Press, pp.65-106. Gupta, , 2005. Caste and politics: identity over system. Annual Review of Anthropology, 34, pp.409-427.

Inden, R.B., 2010. Village India, Living Essence of the Ancient. Imagining India. Indiana University Press.

* King, , 1999. Orientalism and the modern myth of “Hinduism.” Numen, 46(2), pp.146-185.

Ludden, D., 2003. Why area studies? Mirsepassi, A., Basu, A. and Weaver, F.S. eds., 2003. Localizing knowledge in a globalizing world: Recasting the area studies debate. Syracuse University Press. Introduction and Chapter 7.

Pandian, M.S., 1995. Beyond Colonial Crumbs: Cambridge school, identity politics & Dravidian movement(s). Eco. & Pol. Weekly. Pinney, C., 2004. ‘Photos of the Gods’: The Printed Image and Political Struggle in India. Reaktion Books, pp.7-24.

Said, E., 1979. Orientalism. Vintage, New York, pp.1-28, pp.31-110.

Srinivas, M.N., 1980. Relations Between Castes & The Changing Village. The remembered village (No. 26). Uni. of California Press. Washbrook, D.A., 1999. Orients and Occidents: colonial discourse theory and the historiography of the British Empire. The Oxford History of the British Empire, 5, pp.596-611.

Session 3. Globalizing India: Exploring new Livelihoods, Landscapes and Imaginations

Bhandari, P., 2017. Pre-marital Relationships and the Family in Modern India. South Asia Mult. Ac. Journal, (16).

De Bercegol, R. and Gowda, S., 2014. Slumdog non-millionaires: Small and medium-sized towns in India. Metropolitiques EU.

* Gooptu, , 2009. Neoliberal subjectivity, enterprise culture and new workplaces: organised retail and shopping malls in India.

Economic and Political Weekly, pp.45-54.

* Fernandes, L., 2006. Liberalization, democracy and middle-class politics in India’s new middle class: Democratic politics in an era of economic reform. University of Minnesota Press. Can be complemented by: Fernandes, L. 2015. India’s middle classes in contemporary India. In A. Jacobsen (ed.), Routledge handbook of contemporary India, Routledge.

Jaffrelot, C., 2008. Why should we vote? The Indian middle class and the functioning of the world’s largest democracy. Patterns of middle class consumption in India and China, pp.35-54.

Kapila, K., 2008. The measure of a tribe: the cultural politics of constitutional reclassification in North India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14(1), pp.117-134.

Lukose, R., 2005. Empty citizenship: Protesting politics in the era of globalization. Cultural Anthropology, 20(4), pp.506-533. Mazzarella, W., 2003. Citizens have sex, consumers make love in Shoveling Smoke: Advertising and Globalization in Contemporary India, Duke University Press, Durham, pp.59-98.

Osella, C. and Osella, F., 1998. Friendship and flirting: micro-politics in Kerala, South India. J. of the R. Anthro. Inst., pp.189-206.

Sridharan, E., 2004. The growth and sectoral composition of India’s middle class: Its impact on the politics of economic liberalization.

India Review, 3(4), pp.405-428.

Session 4. Vernacularizing India: Grassroots Politics and the Rise of Lower Castes

Banerjee, M., 2015. Why do people vote, in Why India Votes? Routledge.

Chandra, K., 2000. The transformation of ethnic politics in India: The decline of Congress and the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party in Hoshiarpur. The journal of Asian studies, 59(1), pp.26-61.

Das, V., 2007. The force of the local. Life and Words: Violence and the Descent into the Ordinary. Univ. of California Press. Iyer, L., Khanna, T. and Varshney, A., 2013. Caste and entrepreneurship in India. Eco. and Political Weekly, 48(6), pp.52-60. Jaffrelot, C., 2007. Caste and the rise of marginalized groups in Ganguly, S. (ed.). The state of India’s democracy, pp.66-85. Jeffrey, C. and Young, S., 2014. Jugād: Youth and enterprise in India. A. of the Asso. of Ame. Geographers, 104(1), pp.182-195.

Jeffrey, C., Jeffery, P. and Jeffery, R., 2008. Dalit revolution? New politicians in Uttar Pradesh, India. The Journal of Asian Studies, 67(4), pp.1365-1396.

* Krishna, , 2010. Local politics. The Oxford companion to politics in India, pp.299-313.

Hansen, T.B., 2004. Politics as permanent performance: The production of political authority in the locality. Zavos, J., Wyatt, A. and Hewitt, V.M. eds., 2004. The politics of cultural mobilization in India. Oxford University Press, USA, pp.19-36.

* Michelutti, L., 2007. The vernacularization of democracy: political participation and popular politics in North India. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 13(3), 639-656.

Palshikar, S., 2014. The defeat of the Congress. Economic and Political Weekly, 49(39), pp.57-63. Varshney, A., 2000. Is India becoming more democratic? The Journal of Asian Studies, 59(1), pp.3-25.

Yadav, Y. 1999, Electoral Politics in the Time of Change: India’s Third Electoral System, 1989-99, Economic & Political Weekly.

Wyatt, A., 2010. Party system change in South India: Political entrepreneurs, patterns and processes. Routledge, pp.82-97.

Session 5. Historicising India: State, Citizenship and the Subaltern Question

Chakrabarty, D., 2009. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial thought and historical difference. Princeton University Press, pp.3-27.

* Chatterjee, , 2012. After subaltern studies. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(35), pp.44-49.

* Chaturvedi, ed., 2000. Mapping Subaltern Studies and the Postcolonial (Mappings Series). Verso Books, pp.1-7, 8-23.

Guha, R., 1994. The prose of counter-insurgency. Dirks, N.B., Eley, G. and Ortner, S.B. (eds), Culture/power/history: A reader in contemporary social theory. Princeton University Press. pp.336-71.

Guha, R., 1997. Colonialism in South Asia: A Dominance without Hegemony and Its Historiography, Dominance without hegemony. History and Power in Colonial India, Harvard University Press, pp.1-95.

Guha, R., 2000. The unquiet woods: ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya. Univ. of California Press, pp.1-8. Kaviraj, S., 1992. The Imaginary Institution of India. Amin, S. (ed.), Subaltern Studies, Vol.VII Oxford Uni. P. New Delhi, pp.1-39. Pandey, G., 1994. The prose of otherness. Arnold, D. and Hardiman, D., Subaltern Studies, Vol.VIII, OUP New Delhi, pp.188-221.

Spivak, G.C., 1988. Can the subaltern speak?. Nelson, C. and Grossberg, L. (eds), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture. University of Illinois Press, pp.271-313.

Session 6. Measuring India: ‘Poverty Amid Plenty’ after the Liberal Turn

Ahmed, S. and Varshney, A., 2008. Battles half won: The political economy of India’s growth and economic policy since independence. Commission on Growth and Development, The Int. Bank for Reconstruction and Development, The World Bank.

Besley, T., Burgess, R. and Esteve-Volart, B., 2007. The policy origins of poverty and growth in India. Besley, T. and Cord, L. eds., 2007.

Delivering on the promise of pro-poor growth: Insights and lessons from country experiences. World Bank, pp.59-79.

Bardhan, P., 2010. Awakening giants, feet of clay: Assessing the economic rise of China and India. Princeton Uni. Press, pp.78-89. Corbridge, S., 2009. The political economy of development in India since independence. Brass, P.R. ed., 2010. Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Routledge.

Datt, G. and Ravallion, M., 2002. Is India’s economic growth leaving the poor behind? The journal of economic perspectives, 16(3).

* Drèze, J. and Sen, A., 2013. The grip of Inequality. An uncertain glory: India and its contradictions. Princeton University Press. Harriss-White, B., 2003. The workforce and its social structures. India working: Essays on society and economy, Vol. 8. Cambridge University Press, 17-42.

* Kohli, A., 2012. Political Change: Illusion of Inclusion. Poverty amid plenty in the new India. Cambridge University Press. Kumar, U. and Subramanian, A., 2012. Growth in India’s States in the first decade of the 21st century. & Pol. W., 47(3). Naseemullah, A., 2016. The Rise and Fall of Statist Governance in India. Development after Statism. Cambridge University Press. Varshney, A., 2017. Growth, Inequality, and Nationalism. Journal of Democracy, 28(3), pp.41-51.

Verma, A.K., 2014. Development and governance trump caste identities in Uttar Pradesh. Eco. & Pol. Weekly, 49(39), pp.89-94.

Session 7. Conceptualising India: Secularism without Secularisation?

Ahmad, I., 2009. Islamism and democracy in India: the transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami. Princeton Uni. Press. Chapter 7. Asad, T., 2003. Secularism, Nation-State, Religion. Formations of the secular: Christianity, Islam, modernity. Stanford Uni. Press.

* Bhargava, , 2007. The distinctiveness of Indian secularism in The Future of Secularism, Oxford University Press, New York.

Brass, Paul. 2003. Introduction: Explaining Communal Violence. The production of Hindu-Muslim violence in contemporary India. Seattle: Wash, University of Washington Press, pp.5-39.

Chandra, K., 2007. Why ethnic parties succeed: Patronage and ethnic head counts in India. Cambridge Uni. Press, pp.115-142. Hasan, M., 1997. Secularism: The Post-Colonial Predicament. Legacy of a divided nation: India’s Muslims since independence. Hurst, London, pp.134-165.

* Jaffrelot, , 2017. Toward a Hindu State?. Journal of Democracy, 28(3), pp.52-63.

Iqtidar, H., 2011. Secularism in Pakistan. Secularizing Islamists? Jama’at-e-Islami & Jama’at-ud-Da’wa. Uni. of Chicago Press. Jalal, A., 1996. Secularists, subalterns and the stigma of ‘communalism’. The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 33(1). Jafffrelot, C. and Tillin, L., 2017. Populism in India.Taggart, P., Kaltwasser, C., Espejo, P.(eds).The Oxford Handbook of Populism. Mehta, P.B., 2004. Secularism and the Identity Trap in Hasan, M., 2004. Will Secular India Survive?. ImprintOne.

Nandy, A., 1995. An anti-secularist manifesto. India International Centre Quarterly, 22(1), pp.35-64.

Smooha, S., 1990. Minority status in an ethnic democracy: The status of the Arab minority in Israel. Eth. and racial studies, 13(3).

Stepan, A., 2015. India, Sri Lanka, and the Majoritarian Danger. Journal of Democracy, 26(1), pp.128-140.

Susewind, R., 2017. Muslims in Indian cities: Degrees of segregation and the elusive ghetto. Environment and Planning A, 49(6).

Session 8. Projecting India: Foreign Policy of a Power in the Making

Bajpai, K., Basit, S. and Krishnappa, V. eds., 2014. India’s grand strategy: history, theory, cases. Routledge, p.113-150.

Basrur, R., 2011. India: A major power in the making. Major Powers and the Quest for Status in International Politics, Palgrave Macmillan US, pp.181-202.

Burgess, S.F., 2009. India and South Asia: Towards a benign hegemony. Indian foreign policy in a unipolar world, pp.238-240.

Jaffrelot, C., 2009. India, an Emerging Power, but How Far?. Emerging Powers: The Wellspring of a New World Order, Columbia University Press, New-York, pp.76-89.

Ladwig, W.C., 2010. India and military power projection: Will the land of Gandhi […]? Asian Survey, 50(6), pp.1162-1183. Luce, E., 2010. A triangular dance. In spite of the gods: The rise of modern India. Anchor. Chapter 7, pp.257-295.

Ogden, C., 2014. Makers of Foreign Policy. Indian Foreign Policy. Polity Press, Cambridge, pp.36-79 Pant, H.V., 2009. A rising India’s search for a foreign policy. Orbis, 53(2), pp.250-264.

* Raja Mohan, C., 2013. The Changing Dynamics of India’s Multilateralism. Shaping the Emerging World: India and the Multilateral Order, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 25-42.

Tellis, A., 2015. US-India Relations: The Struggle for an Enduring Partnership. Malone, D.M., Mohan, C.R. and Raghavan, S. eds., 2015. The Oxford Handbook of Indian Foreign Policy. OUP Oxford.

* Sullivan, K., 2015. India’s Ambivalent Projection of Self as a Global Power: Between Compliance and Resistance. In Competing visions of India in world politics. Palgrave Macmillan UK, 15-33.

Session 9. Mapping India: Explaining Regional Variations

Ahluwalia, M.S., 2000. Economic performance of states in post-reforms period. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.1637-1648. Baruah, S., 2003. Nationalizing space: Cosmetic federalism and the politics of development in N.E. India. Dvm. & Change, 34(5). Ganguly, S. and Bajpai, K., 1994. India and the Crisis in Kashmir. Asian Survey, 34(5), pp.401-416.

Gerring, J., Kingstone, P., Lange, M. and Sinha, A., 2011. Democracy, history, and economic performance: a case-study approach. World Development, 39(10), pp.1735-1748.

Jenkins, R., 2011. The politics of India’s special economic zones. Understanding India’s new political economy: a great transformation, pp.49-65.

Kailash, K.K., 2014. Regional Parties in the 16th Lok Sabha Elections: Who Survived and Why?. Eco. & Political Weekly, 49(39).

* Kohli, , 2012. Regional Diversity: To Him Who Hath. Poverty amid plenty in the new India. Cambridge University Press.

Rudolph, L.I. and Rudolph, S.H., 2001. Iconisation of Chandrababu: Sharing sovereignty in India’s federal market economy. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.1541-1552.

Sinha, A., 2005. The Puzzle of Developmental Failure and Success. The regional roots of developmental politics in India: A divided leviathan. Indiana University Press.

Singh, U.K., 2004. POTA and Federalism. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.1793-1797.

Stepan, A., Linz, J.J. and Yadav, Y., 2010. The Rise of “State-Nations.” Journal of Democracy, 21(3), pp.50-68.

* Tillin, L., 2013. Social Movements, Political Parties and Statehood: Jharkhand and Uttarakhand. Remapping India: New states and their political origins. Hurst

Tillin, L., 2016. Assymetric Federalism. Choudhry, S., Khosla, M. and Mehta, P.B. eds., 2016. The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution. Oxford University Press.

Session 10. Changing India: Making Sense of (New) Social Movements

Ahmad, I., 2009. Islamism and democracy in India: the transformation of Jamaat-e-Islami. Princeton University Press.

Chandra, U., 2013. Going primitive: The ethics of indigenous rights activism in contemporary Jharkhand. South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal, (7).

Kumar, R., 1997. The history of doing: An illustrated account of movements for women’s rights and feminism in India 1800-1990. Zubaan. Guha, R., 1999. Elementary aspects of peasant insurgency in colonial India. Duke University Press.

Guha, R., 2000. The unquiet woods: ecological change and peasant resistance in the Himalaya. Univ of California Press. Chaudhuri, M., 2004. Feminism in India.

Jeffrey, C. and Dyson, J., 2016. Now: prefigurative politics through a north Indian lens. Economy and Society, 45(1), pp.77-100. Nielsen, K.B., 2012. ‘An activist can’t become a politician’: social activism, leadership and the (un) making of a political career in an Indian state. Contemporary South Asia, 20(4), pp.435-453.

Nielsen, K. and Nilsen, A. eds., 2016. Social Movements and the State in India: Deepening Democracy?. Springer.

Mawdsley, E., 1998. After Chipko: From environment to region in Uttaranchal. Journal of Peasant Studies, 25(4), pp.36-54. Martelli, J-T. 2017. Waiting for the liberal Indian enfant terrible, IAPS dialogue, University of Nottingham.

Martelli, J-T. and Ari, B., 2018. From One Participant Cohort to Another: Surveying Inter-generational Political Incubation in an Indian University, India Review, forthcoming.

Omvedt, G., 1993. Reinventing revolution: New social movements and the socialist tradition in India. ME Sharpe.

Omvedt, G., 1994. Peasants, dalits and women: Democracy and India’s new social movements. Journal of Contemporary Asia, 24(1), pp.35-48.

John, M.E., 2008. Women’s studies in India: a reader. Penguin Books.

Oommen, Tharrileth K., ed. Social movements. 2. Concerns of equity and security. Oxford University Press, 2011.

Roy, S., 2009. Melancholic politics and the politics of melancholia: The Indian women’s movement. Feminist Theory, 10(3), pp.341-357. Sen, O. and Baviskar, A., 1994. River of stories. [graphic novel].

* Shah, , 2004. Social movements in India: A review of literature. SAGE Publications India.

Shah, A., 2012. Eco-incarceration?:’Walking with the Comrades’. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(21), pp.32-34.

Shah, A., 2013. The agrarian question in a Maoist guerrilla zone: Land, labour and capital in the forests and hills of Jharkhand, India.

Journal of agrarian change, 13(3), pp.424-450.