Indian Self Rule

Now back in print, this important collection of first-hand accounts from individuals who had leading roles in Indian-white relations is a necessary reference for anyone interested in the modern Indian experience. Reviewing fifty years of Indian history since the Indian Reorganization Act was passed during FDR's New Deal administration, the contributors include Indian leaders and activists from a wide cross-section of America's varied native communities.

"How did the founders of the most populous democratic nation in the world meet the problem of establishing a democracy after the departure of foreign rule? The justification for British imperial rule had stressed the impossibility of Indian self-government. At the heart of India's founding moment, in which constitution-making and democratization occurred simultaneously, lay the question of how to implement democracy in an environment regarded as unqualified for its existence. India's founders met this challenge in direct terms-the people, they acknowledged, had to be educated to create democratic citizens. But the path to education lay not in being ruled by a superior class of men but rather in the very creation of a self-sustaining politics. Universal suffrage was instituted amidst poverty, illiteracy, social heterogeneity, and centuries of tradition. Under the guidance of B. R. Ambedkar, Indian lawmakers crafted a constitutional system that could respond to the problem of democratization under the most inhospitable of conditions. On January 26, 1950, the Indian constitution-the longest in the world-came into effect. More than half of the world's constitutions have been written in the past three decades. Unlike the constitutional revolutions of the late-eighteenth century, these contemporary revolutions have occurred in countries that are characterized by low levels of economic growth and education; are divided by race, religion, and ethnicity; and have democratized at once, rather than gradually. The Indian founding is a natural reference point for such constitutional moments-when democracy, constitutionalism, and modernity occur simultaneously"--

This volume presents an original account of Mahatma Gandhi's four meanings of freedom: as sovereign national independence, as the political freedom of the individual, as freedom from poverty, and as the capacity for self-rule or spiritual freedom. In this volume, seven leading Gandhi scholars write on these four meanings, engaging the reader in the ongoing debates in the East and the West and contributing to a new comparative political theory.

After centuries of struggle, the Indians of North America own less than 2% of the land settled by their ancestors. Indian Self-Rule traces the history of white-Indian relations from nineteenth century treaties through the present, as tribal leaders, historians, teachers, and other Indians gather at a 1983 conference organized to reevaluate the significance of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934. The experiences of the Flathead Nation of Montana, the Navajo Nation of the Southwest, and the Quinault people of the Olympic Peninsula illustrate some of the ways Indians have dealt with shifting demands imposed upon them, from allotment to reorganization to termination and relocation. Particularly eloquent are Indian reflections upon the difficulties of maintaining cultural identities in a changing world and within a larger society that views Indians with ambivalence.

India today is a vibrant free-market democracy, a nation well on its way to overcoming decades of widespread poverty. The nation’s rise is one of the great international stories of the late twentieth century, and in India Unbound the acclaimed columnist Gurcharan Das offers a sweeping economic history of India from independence to the new millennium. Das shows how India’s policies after 1947 condemned the nation to a hobbled economy until 1991, when the government instituted sweeping reforms that paved the way for extraordinary growth. Das traces these developments and tells the stories of the major players from Nehru through today. As the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble India, Das offers a unique insider’s perspective and he deftly interweaves memoir with history, creating a book that is at once vigorously analytical and vividly written. Impassioned, erudite, and eminently readable, India Unbound is a must for anyone interested in the global economy and its future.