An Indo-American Community Lecture by Radha Kumar, former director-general of the Delhi Policy Group and a specialist on peace and security in South Asia, on her forthcoming publication titled, The Republic Relearned (forthcoming, Penguin Random House India, March 2024), that briefly analyses Modi’s India, asking whether it can be called a second republic that reflects totalitarian conditions as defined by Hannah Arendt. It focuses on India’s past experiences of democracy renewal and asks what lessons can be learned to anchor Indian democracy more firmly when the opportunity arises.
The event will be moderated by Janaki Bakhle, Associate Professor of History at the University of California, Berkeley
——————–
- DATE: Tue, April 23, 2024
- TIME: 5-6:30 pm Berkeley | Calculate your local time
- VENUE: 10 Stephens Hall
- LIVESTREAM: On FB at ISASatUCBerkeley
———–
About the Book:
This book is written in a time of increasing debate on the rise of autocracy, including in India, as a spate of books on the Modi administration detail. While this book briefly analyses Modi’s India, asking whether it can be called a second republic that reflects totalitarian conditions as defined by Hannah Arendt, it focuses on India’s past experiences of democracy renewal and asks what lessons can be learned to anchor Indian democracy more firmly when the opportunity arises.
It is generally assumed that Indian democracy has had an unbroken run since independence, with the brief disruption of the 1975 to 1977 emergency. This book argues that, on the contrary, India has suffered longer periods of deterioration in its democratic markers than in their development. The country underwent three relatively short-lived waves of democracy renewal after the founding years of the republic (between 1967 and 2014), as compared to almost four decades of democracy decay.
That fact, Kumar argues, should make an examination of the three waves of democracy renewal even more significant. The flaws in Indian democracy that made the past nine years of autocracy possible suggest that the clock cannot be turned back. Rather, a new wave of democracy renewal – which Kumar calls a third republic – will have to focus on anchoring democratic institutions in such a way that they cannot easily be suborned. What are the lessons from past experience?
Examining the three waves of democracy renewal, Kumar finds that the most valuable lessons lie in policy actions as well as proposals that were left unimplemented. These, which ranged from electoral reform to human development, social justice and institutional as well as federal autonomy, could form the bedrock for a third republic, albeit partly.
A greater problem is one presaged at independence itself, of instilling a democratic culture in a deeply unequal society. India has long been an outlier for democracy theorists for this reason, leading theorists such as Kaviraj to explore particular democracy formation in a post-colonial primarily agrarian society. Does the current period resemble the Emergency period, when civil and political society (to use Chatterjee’s term) intersected with political parties to bring in a democratic administration? Is the current period one of reckoning, in which economic growth has unleashed demands for equality of opportunity rather than low level doles (which are nevertheless necessary given the levels of poverty)? How will a fourth wave of democracy renewal tackle the formidable challenges of entrenched institutional bias in the administration and police? Here again, the past three waves of democracy renewal offer pointers.
India’s democratic future, Kumar concludes, depends on the extent to which a revived political opposition and civil and political society can draw on the lessons of the three waves of democracy renewal. She is hopeful.
Speaker Bio: Radha Kumar is former director-general of the Delhi Policy Group and a specialist on peace and security in South Asia. Earlier director of the Mandela Centre for Peace at Jamia Millia Islamia University (2005-2010), Dr. Kumar was senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York (1999-2003), associate fellow at the Institute for War and Peace Studies at Columbia University (1996-8) and executive director of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly in Prague (1992-4). She chaired the United Nations University Council and is vice-chair of the SIPRI Board. She was one of the group of interlocutors for Jammu and Kashmir appointed by the Government of India (2010-11).
Dr. Kumar’s forthcoming book, The Republic Relearned: A Brief History of Democracy in India, will be published by Penguin Random House in 2024. Her previous books include Paradise at War: A Political History of Kashmir (Aleph: 2018), A Gender Atlas of India (with Karthika Sudhir and Marcel Korff, Sage: 2018), (ed.) Negotiating Peace in Deeply Divided Societies: A Set of Simulations (Sage: 2009), Making Peace with Partition (Penguin: 2005), Divide and Fall? Bosnia in the Annals of Partition (Verso: 1997), and A History of Doing: Movements for Women’s Rights and Feminism in India, 1900-1990 (Kali for Women and Verso: 1993). Her articles have appeared in Foreign Affairs, the EU Institute for Security Studies, the Centre for European Policy Studies, the World Policy Journal, the Brown Journal of World Affairs, the Indian Economic and Social History Review and the Economic and Political Weekly. She is a frequent OpEd contributor to the Indian Express and The Hindu.
_________________
About the Lecture Series
The Indo-American Community Lectureship in India Studies is a part of UC Berkeley’s Indo-American Community Chair in India Studies, a chair endowed in 1990-91 with the support of the CG of India in San Francisco, the Hon. Satinder K. Lambah and hundreds of members of the Indo-American community. This lectureship enables ISAS, with the support of the Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR), to bring prominent individuals from India to Berkeley to deliver a lecture and interact with campus and community members during a two-week stay. Past Lectureship holders include Upendra Baxi, Andre Beteille, Madhav Gadgil, Ramachandra Guha, Meenakshi Mukherjee, Narendra Panjwani, Anuradha Kapur, Ashis Nandy, Amita Baviskar, Romila Thapar, Nivedita Menon, Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Nandini Sundar, and Tanika Sarkar. Read more about the series or listen to past lectures HERE
_________________
Event made possible with the support of the Sarah Kailath Chair of India Studies
Follow us on TWITTER
Like us on FACEBOOK
For DIRECTIONS to the Institute please enter “Institute for South Asia Studies” in your google maps or click this GOOGLE MAPS LINK.
PARKING INFORMATION
Please note that parking is not always easily available in Berkeley. Take public transportation if possible or arrive early to secure your spot.
Event is FREE and OPEN to the public.
_____________
If you require an accommodation for effective communication (ASL interpreting/CART captioning, alternative media formats, etc.) or information about campus mobility access features in order to fully participate in this event, please contact Puneeta Kala at pkala@berkeley.edu with as much advance notice as possible and at least 7-10 days in advance of the event.
