Dipesh Chakrabarty
Dipesh Chakrabarty
Lawrence A. Kimpton Distinguished Service Professor of History, South Asian Languages and Civilizations, and the College
University of Chicago
Research Project
Theorizing Indian Democracy
Project Team:
2018 – 2019
Project Summary
| A close look at the meanings and practices of democracy in India deepened understanding of India’s politics and history and helped identify non-Western forms of democracy. |
Indian politics have become an ever more important object of study for scholars in the humanities and social sciences. Indian democracy has long been considered an exceptional case—an unlikely political system for a society marked by high levels of inequality and remarkable fragmentation and diversity. But despite all misgivings, India’s democracy has deepened, broadened, and transformed over the past seven decades, often in ways that belie standard assumptions about the nature and trajectory of democratic politics. Analyzing the meanings and practices of democracy in India therefore offers an important opportunity to rethink key concepts and categories like statehood, popular sovereignty, constitutionalism, and citizenship. Such analysis allows for new accounts of India’s own politics and history and, more broadly, helps us understand the different forms that democracy can take outside of Western Europe and North America. This project initiated a conversation on Indian democracy by bringing together an interdisciplinary team of humanists and social scientists from India, the United States, and Europe.
Topics
Research Team
Project Narrative
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Theorizing Indian Democracy Reading List
Theorizing Indian Democracy Reading List
Reading list for the Theorizing Indian Democracy research project at the Neubauer Collegium
Postcolonial Democracy: Perspectives from South Asia
Discussion
Postcolonial Democracy: Perspectives from South Asia
Behind triumphalist narratives about the global reach and success of democracy after 1945 and the Cold War is a more complex story about the unsettled meaning of “democracy” itself, as an idea and as ...
India in Global Intellectual History
Workshop
India in Global Intellectual History
Once approached primarily through a regional and historical focus on Western Europe and North America, intellectual history has in recent years come to adopt an increasingly expansive, global ...
Empire and Political Thought: A Retrospective
Discussion
Empire and Political Thought: A Retrospective
Over the past two decades, scholars in political theory, intellectual history, and related fields have approached the study of European imperialism with renewed attention. This event, sponsored by ...
Democratic Theory in India
Conference
Democratic Theory in India
This conference, sponsored by the Theorizing Indian Democracy project at the Neubauer Collegium, explored conceptual dimensions of modern democratic politics through a focus on colonial and ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Theorizing Indian Democracy Reading List
Theorizing Indian Democracy Reading List
Reading list for the Theorizing Indian Democracy research project at the Neubauer Collegium
Democratic Theory in India
Conference
Democratic Theory in India
This conference, sponsored by the Theorizing Indian Democracy project at the Neubauer Collegium, explored conceptual dimensions of modern democratic politics through a focus on colonial and ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Postcolonial Democracy: Perspectives from South Asia
Discussion
Postcolonial Democracy: Perspectives from South Asia
Behind triumphalist narratives about the global reach and success of democracy after 1945 and the Cold War is a more complex story about the unsettled meaning of “democracy” itself, as an idea and as ...
Empire and Political Thought: A Retrospective
Discussion
Empire and Political Thought: A Retrospective
Over the past two decades, scholars in political theory, intellectual history, and related fields have approached the study of European imperialism with renewed attention. This event, sponsored by ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
India in Global Intellectual History
Workshop
India in Global Intellectual History
Once approached primarily through a regional and historical focus on Western Europe and North America, intellectual history has in recent years come to adopt an increasingly expansive, global ...
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