Provincial Democracy
Political Imaginaries at the End of Empire in Twentieth-Century South India

Argues for a nuanced understanding of regionalism in India shaped by debates over representation, rights, political reforms and federalism.

Rama Sundari Mantena (Author)

9781009339544, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 24 August 2023

300 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 2 cm, 0.46 kg

'Innovative and richly textured, Provincial Democracy demonstrates how shifting the scale of anti-colonial politics to the princely state and province in India challenges insular histories of nationalism that focus on the creation of nation identities and borders. Recovering how anti-colonial imaginaries and vernacular publics cultivated new democratic futures through federalism, local government, civil liberties, minority rights and modernity, it is critical reading for our times.' Rohit De, Associate Professor, Department of History, Yale University

Situated within the context of seismic global transformations of the early twentieth century—namely the two World Wars and the crisis of the imperial order—Provincial Democracy delves into the period between the decline of empire and the rise of the nation. This period, the book contends, is defined by not only the dominance of the nation state and debates over a new global order, but also the expansion of democratic participation in defining and negotiating political futures and an increased use of the language of liberalism, political rights, and self-government in colonial India. Moreover, it shifts the focus from the dominant narrative of linguistic nationalism as defining regionalism on to debates over questions of representation, rights, political reforms, and federalism. Thus, it uncovers a broad perspective on political imaginaries that anticipated democracy in independent India.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Self-determination, Federation and Civil Liberties in Twentieth-Century South India
1. Liberalism and Anticolonial Politics in South India
Part I. Federation: 2. Self-Determination, Federation and the Provinces
3. Princely Hyderabad, Anticolonialism and Federation
Part II. Civil Liberties: 4. Publicity, civil liberties and political life in Princely Hyderabad
5. The Breakup of Hyderabad
Conclusion: After Empire: Language and Regionalism
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Asian history [HBJF]