Bidyut Chakrabarty

Rajendra Kumar Pandey

This core political science textbook written for the paper Indian Government and Politics explores the changing nature of politico-constitutional institutions and is drawn from the 1950 Constitution of India.

Indian Government and Politics

Sugato Hazra

This book captures how electioneering has changed over the years and how media and marketing have assumed more significance than party manifestos. On 16th May 2014, India witnessed the result of an intense political campaign. Those who were vanquished felt that this was due to the success of a marketing blitzkrieg, which actually pollutes a democracy. Again, for those who supported the eventual winner—the Narendra Modi-led BJP—it was a great victory. Viewed either way, India’s national election for the 16th Lok Sabha in 2014 will remain a landmark in the annals of political campaigns. The work is thus a study of campaign strategies, how they are framed, the role of local actors and to what extent individuals rule over ideologies and vice versa. An important contribution to the study of India’s 2014 General Elections.

The Indian Experience

Winning the Mandate

Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar (1891–1956), popularly known as Babasaheb stands out for his relentless battle against caste discrimination. He was a voice for the marginalized of India’s demography that remained peripheral due to well-entrenched socio-economic and political prejudices. This book is an analytical account of how Ambedkar’s socio-political ideas evolved as part of his wider politico-ideological challenge against self-motivated designs for exploitation of human beings by human beings. The author contends that it was an ideological discourse that he built in a context when dominant nationalist viewpoints seem to have hardly left space for any other discourse to grow. The book argues that Ambedkar’s socio-political ideas were an outcome of his personal experiences of social atrocities which were justified as integral to the caste system. The book comprises six substantial chapters which delve into the socio-political ideas of BR Ambedkar, concentrating on those sets of ideas through which he established his claim as an original thinker in opposition to the dominant nationalist discourse. Unlike the most conventional studies of Ambedkar’s thoughts and ideas, the book provides a new methodological tool to decipher their conceptual roots. It is therefore argued that Babasaheb’s unique conceptualization of social justice was not just an outcome of his existential existence of being a Dalit, but an offshoot of his own understanding of liberalism as a mode of emancipating human beings from shackles of authority, power and domination. Examining Ambedkar’s ideas, the book charts and examines the growth and consolidation of constitutional democracy in India since it was inaugurated with the acceptance of the 1950 Constitution. It will be of interest to scholars in the fields of Indian political theory, South Asian politics and history.

Liberal constitutionalism in a creative mould

The Socio-political Ideas of BR Ambedkar

Participatory governance has a long history in India and this book traces historical-intellectual trajectories of participatory governance and how older Western discourses have influenced Indian policymakers. While colonial rulers devolved power to accommodate dissenting voices, for independent India, participatory governance was a design for democratizing governance in its true sense. Participation also acted as a vehicle for localizing governance. The author draws on both Western and non-Western theoretical treatises and the book seeks to conceptualize localizing governance also as a contextual response. It also makes the argument that despite being located in different socio-economic and political milieu, thinkers converge to appreciate localizing governance as perhaps the only reliable means to democratize governance. The book aims to confirm this argument by reference to sets of evidence from the Indian experience of localizing governance. By attempting a genealogy of participatory governance in the West and in India, and an empirical study of participatory governance in India, the book sheds light on the exchange of ideas and concepts through space and time, thus adding to the growing body of literature in the social sciences on ‘conceptual flow’. It will be of interest to political scientists and historians, in particularly those studying South Asia.

Localizing Governance in India

Focusing on politics and society in India, this book explores new areas enmeshed in the complex social, economic and political processes in the country. Linking the structural characteristics with the broader sociological context, the book emphasizes the strong influence of sociological issues on politics, such as social milieu shaping and the articulation of the political in day-to-day events. Political events are connected with the ever-changing social, economic and political processes in order to provide an analytical framework to explain ‘peculiarities’ of Indian politics. Bidyut Chakrabarty argues that three major ideological influences of colonialism, nationalism and democracy have provided the foundational values of Indian politics. Structured thematically and chronologically, this work is a useful resource for students of political science, sociology and South Asian studies.

Events, Processes and Ideology

Indian Politics and Society Since Independence

In Communism in India, Bidyut Chakrabarty, an expert on contemporary Indian political economy and social movements, presents a sweeping analysis of the changing nature of communist ideology over the past century in India. India's left movements are notable, when placed in comparativehistorical perspective with similar movements elsewhere, as the country is the home of two co-existing strands of modern communism: the parliamentary Communist Party of India (the first democratically elected Marxist government) and the extra-parliamentary revolutionary Maoist movement.Drawing on ethnographic field work conducted in Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, Chakrabarty provides a contextual account of the rise, consolidation, and relative decline of these two types of left radicalism. He looks at how it is that left ideology has co-existed with free-market-orientedeconomic policies as well as the contexts in which more militant strands have more recently taken root, particularly among the young in the poorer districts.

Events, Processes and Ideologies

Communism in India

In Communism in India, Bidyut Chakrabarty-an expert on contemporary Indian political economy and social movements-presents a sweeping analysis of the changing nature of communist ideology over the past century in India. The history and development of India's left movements are unique in that the country is home to two coexisting strands of modern communism. The first of these is the parliamentary Communist Party of India, which constituted the first democratically-elected Marxist government in the country. The parliamentary left subscribes to a social-democratic philosophy, turning to the traditional democratic institutions of governance in their quest to fulfill the Marxist-Leninist goal of establishing a classless society. The second, oppositional, strand is the revolutionary Maoist movement. This branch rejects parliamentary democracy as a means to altering class-relations, as they see the government as an elite organization dedicated to the status quo and age-old system of class exploitation. Drawing on ethnographic field work conducted in Orissa, Chhattisgarh and West Bengal, Chakrabarty provides a contextual account of the rise, consolidation, and decline of these two types of left radicalism. He looks at how it is that left ideology has coexisted with free-market-oriented economic policies, as well as the contexts in which more militant strands have taken root, particularly among the young in poorer districts.

During his campaign against racism in South Africa, and his involvement in the Congress-led nationalist struggle against British colonial rule in India, Mahatma Gandhi developed a new form of political struggle based on the idea of satyagraha, or non-violent protest. He ushered in a new era of nationalism in India by articulating the nationalist protest in the language of non-violence, or ahisma, that galvanized the masses into action. Focusing on the principles of satyagraha and non-violence, and their evolution in the context of anti-imperial movements organized by Gandhi, this fascinating book looks at how these precepts underwent changes reflecting the ideological beliefs of the participants. Assessing Gandhi and his ideology, the text centres on the ways in which Gandhi took into account the views of other leading personalities of the era whilst articulating his theory of action. Concentrating on Gandhi’s writings in Harijan, the weekly newspaper he founded, this volume provides a unique contextualized study of an iconic man’s social and political ideas.

Social and Political Thought of Mahatma Gandhi

Politics, Ideology and Nationalism: Jinnah, Savarkar and Ambedkar versus Gandhi is a new argument based on familiar historical evidences. It discusses three leaders—Savarkar, Ambedkar and Jinnah—in their opposition to Gandhiboth in terms of ideology as well as social and political discourse. Although there are biographical works and other notable publications on them, none of these attempt to engage in contrasting their ideology and practices on a common platform. This book examines Gandhi and Savarkar–Ambedkar–Jinnah’s commonality of opposition and their differing ideas of modernity. All three of them saw Gandhi as the biggest hurdle to the projects that they conceived. The book explores how these differences went beyond politics and shaped the contours of Indian politics during the 1930s and 1940s, and continue to affect it even today.

Bidyut Chakrabarty

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