The Scholars' Rebellion: Educational Interests and Agitational Politics in Gujarat

1977 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 457-476 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawn E. Jones ◽  
Rodney W. Jones

Severe urban rioting, the accompaniment of an organized political agitation known as the Nav Nirman (Reconstruction) movement, gripped the Indian state of Gujarat in early 1974, bringing to a violent climax social and political discontents from beneath a surface tranquility. Costly in lives and property and damaging to the political fabric of Gujarat, the ten-week-long agitation subsided only after winning two political objectives: first, the expulsion of the Chief Minister and imposition of President's Rule; and second, dissolution of the Gujarat legislative assembly. Resisted by the central government, the overthrow in Gujarat was an embarrassment to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and was a factor leading to the declaration of national emergency in June 1975. Gujarat's recent troubles have a background in the 1969 national split of the Congress party, but the immediate issues of Nav Nirman were food scarcity, rising prices, corruption in governing circles, and grievances in the educational system. These issues were seized upon by college students, who sparked the riots and who thereafter provided the most visible leadership of the movement.

Significance Each of these states except Punjab has a government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Punjab is one of just three states with a chief minister that belongs to India’s main opposition Congress party. Impacts A poor showing by Congress would further reduce its leverage with other opposition parties in talks over forming a broad anti-Modi alliance. Victory in UP would enhance Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s national profile. Election campaigning will likely lead to a spike in COVID-19 cases.


Significance The ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA), led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has retained a parliamentary majority and the BJP has extended its single-party majority. During campaigning, Modi emphasised nationalist themes, ranging from Hindu nationalism to national security, while deflecting criticism over problems such as the country’s jobless growth. Impacts The BJP’s pledge to spend 100 trillion rupees (1.4 trillion dollars) on infrastructure will likely prompt a widening of the fiscal deficit. Leading BJP figures such as party President Amit Shah and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath may aim to succeed Modi in 2024. Rahul Gandhi will highly likely relinquish leadership of the main opposition Congress party.


Subject Caste politics in India. Significance In a sign of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ability to shape the political agenda, the National Democratic Alliance's candidate Ram Nath Kovind was sworn in as India's 14th president on July 25. With attacks on Dalits (low castes) in the north Indian heartlands of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) surging, the nomination of a Dalit for the presidency was designed to strengthen the party's appeal to the community ahead of state elections. Impacts Support for the main opposition Congress party among Dalits will decline in Gujarat. Beef and leather exports will fall despite the Supreme Court suspending the ban on trading cattle for slaughter. Anti-Muslim violence may increase across the country.


Author(s):  
Ian Hall

This chapter examines the life and political career of Narendra Modi, from his origins in Gujarat to his time with the Hindu nationalist organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), and his move into politics, first as a backroom figure and then as a politician. It explores too his time as Gujarat Chief Minister, from 2001 to 2014, and the political style he evolved to manage that state. It looks at Modi’s relationship with the Hindu nationalist tradition and the development of his version of Hindutva, which some term Moditva (Modi-ness). Finally, it lays out Modi’s rise to national prominence and his leadership methods as Prime Minister.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (5) ◽  
pp. 1003-1049 ◽  
Author(s):  
ARVIND RAJAGOPAL

AbstractRecent accounts of the National Emergency of 1975–1977 concur that the deviations it represented, while genuine, did not represent any fundamental change on the part of the Indian state, and that the period offers little distinct insight on the post-independence period as a whole. This paper seeks to argue, to the contrary, that the Emergency was a watershed in post-independence history. With its ban on dissent and suspension of constitutional rights, the Emergency sought to suppress all political disturbances to governance. By doing so, it forefronted the problems of postcolonial politics in at least three respects. First, the Emergency demonstrated that coercion was inextricably combined with consent in state-led development. Second, this led to a heavy reliance on practices of communication to redefine coercion and to stage popular consent. Third, in the process, the boundaries of the political were reinforced, emphasizing the friend/enemy difference fundamental to politics. Governance in the aftermath of the Emergency placed an overt reliance on consent over coercion, but in ways that are themselves significant. Categories of culture and community, and related forms of social distinction, gained in importance over earlier developmental distinctions premised on an authoritarian relationship between state and the people. The change meant a shift away from the Nehruvian focus on the economy as the crucial arena of nation-building, involving labour as the key modality of citizenship. Instead, culture and community became the categories that gained political salience in the period of economic liberalization. The mass media were central to this redefinition of the political, multiplying in size and reach, and acquiring market-sensitive forms of address couched in the rhetoric of individual choice. These events, I suggest, are critical to understanding the formation of the new middle class in India, as a category that increasingly defines itself through cultural and consumerist forms of identity, and is less identified with the state.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-36
Author(s):  
LAYLI UDDIN

Abstract Between March and May 1954, an election and two riots took place in East Pakistan, with far-reaching implications. On 30 May, the prime minister of Pakistan, in a bellicose tone, declared that ‘enemy agents’ and ‘disruptive forces’ were at work and imposed governor's rule for the first time in East Pakistan. The autocratic and high-handed attitude of the Central government in Karachi over the seemingly wayward East Wing was to become a portent of future conflicts between the province and the state, eventually leading to the unmaking of Pakistan in 1971. What precipitated the 1954 crisis? Who were the enemy agents and disruptive forces that the prime minister had alluded to? The reference was to the Bengali labourers in East Pakistan—the main protagonists of the 1954 Karnaphuli Paper Mill and Adamjee Jute Mill riots. These were the most violent industrial riots in the history of United Pakistan, if not the subcontinent. Using sensitive materials obtained from multiple archives, this article dismantles the conventional thesis that these riots were ‘Bengali–Bihari riots’, fanned by the flames of Bengali provincialism at the political level, or events instigated by the Centre to derail the democratic hopes of the Bengali population of Pakistan. A microhistory of the events demonstrates a more complex picture of postcolonial labour formations and solidarities; the relationship between state-led industrialization and refugee rehabilitation, and conflicting visions of sovereignty. This is a story of estrangement between employers and workers over the question of who were the real sovereigns of labour, capital, and Pakistan itself.


1969 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-176 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lau Teik Soon

Ever since the Separation on 9th August 1965, the principal leaders of Malaysia and Singapore have expressed the view that their separated states would be compelled by the forces of historical, geographical, economic and social ties to reunite some day. When this would be accomplished has not been clearly defined nor has the manner of their reunification been suggested. Tengku Abdul Rahman, the Prime Minister of Malaysia, merely stated that Singapore would be welcomed back sometime in the future, while Lee Kuan Yew, the Singapore Prime Minister, admitted that it could be a task for the next generation to seek reunification. However, both were hopeful that at some future date circumstances would be more conducive than they were prior to 1965, for another attempt at merger. It is generally agreed that the Separation was a political separation arising from the incompatibility of the political views of the Alliance-controlled central government and the state government of Singapore in the hands of the People's Action Party (PAP). It has also been implied that the fact of their interdependency in several basic fields even after Separation could well provide a strong basis for some form of reunification.


2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Rakesh Ankit

This article presents four episodes from the political period 1969 to 1976 in India, focusing on the views and actions of P. N. Haksar, Principal Secretary and Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1967–1973). Unlike the ‘national/international politics’ hitherto under focus from then, that is, the Congress split (1969), birth of Bangladesh (1971) and the JP Movement/Emergency (1974–1975), the aspects under consideration in this article are of subterranean existence. First of these aspects is the provincial reverberations of the Congress split, the case considered here being that of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee. Second is the attitude of the Congress Party towards left opposition, the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI [M]) in West Bengal, as revealed through the anxieties of Governor Shanti Dhavan. The third aspect under consideration is a glimpse of centre–states relations, as shown through New Delhi’s interactions with the EMS Namboodiripad-led and CPI (M)-dominated United Front Government of Kerala. Finally, the article looks at Haksar’s attempts at planning and development for the state of Bihar. Each of these four themes was among the ‘wider range of functions’ that Mrs Gandhi wished to be performed by her Secretariat and to allow us to test how successful each of it was. Each of these provides a context for contemporary issues.


Author(s):  
Nguyen Van Dung ◽  
Giang Khac Binh

As developing programs is the core in fostering knowledge on ethnic work for cadres and civil servants under Decision No. 402/QD-TTg dated 14/3/2016 of the Prime Minister, it is urgent to build training program on ethnic minority affairs for 04 target groups in the political system from central to local by 2020 with a vision to 2030. The article highlighted basic issues of practical basis to design training program of ethnic minority affairs in the past years; suggested solutions to build the training programs in integration and globalization period.


2020 ◽  
pp. 74-86
Author(s):  
Alexandra Arkhangelskaya

The history of the formation of South Africa as a single state is closely intertwined with events of international scale, which have accordingly influenced the definition and development of the main characteristics of the foreign policy of the emerging state. The Anglo-Boer wars and a number of other political and economic events led to the creation of the Union of South Africa under the protectorate of the British Empire in 1910. The political and economic evolution of the Union of South Africa has some specific features arising from specific historical conditions. The colonization of South Africa took place primarily due to the relocation of Dutch and English people who were mainly engaged in business activities (trade, mining, agriculture, etc.). Connected by many economic and financial threads with the elite of the countries from which the settlers left, the local elite began to develop production in the region at an accelerated pace. South Africa’s favorable climate and natural resources have made it a hub for foreign and local capital throughout the African continent. The geostrategic position is of particular importance for foreign policy in South Africa, which in many ways predetermined a great interest and was one of the fundamental factors of international involvement in the development of the region. The role of Jan Smuts, who served as Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and from 1939 to 1948, was particularly prominent in the implementation of the foreign and domestic policy of the Union of South Africa in the focus period of this study. The main purpose of this article is to study the process of forming the mechanisms of the foreign policy of the Union of South Africa and the development of its diplomatic network in the period from 1910 to 1948.


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