Global Political Thought Seminar
Date and Time
Waiting for the People: The Idea of Democracy in Indian Anticolonial Thought
Speaker
- Nazmul Sultan, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University.
Discussants
- David Armitage, Faculty Associate; Harvard Academy Senior Scholar. Lloyd C. Blankfein Professor of History, Department of History; Chair, Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard University.
- Aziz Rana, J. Donald Monan, S.J., University Professor of Law and Government, Boston College.
Contact
Yi Ning Chang
yiningchang@g.harvard.edu
Abstract
Waiting for the People: The Idea of Democracy in Indian Anticolonial Thought (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2024) examines how a foundational set of disputes over the terms of modern peoplehood underwrote the formation of the democratic project in colonial India. Situating the question of popular sovereignty at the center of the monumental clash between the British Empire and Indian anticolonial movement, the book reconstructs a competing set of Indian attempts to redefine the meaning of the people, ranging from a skeptical approach to the criterion of popular authorization to a persistent questioning of the idea of popular unity. By reframing the problem of anticolonialism in modern Indian political thought, the book offers a new interpretation of the rise of democracy on a global scale.
An event by the Association for Global Political Thought.