Professor Mridula Mukherjee at Democracy Dialogues on 19 November 2023

 

Democracy Dialogues Lecture Series (Online )
Organised by New Socialist Initiative

26th Lecture

Theme: Who’s Afraid of Jawaharlal Nehru?

                           Speaker:   Professor Mridula Mukherjee (Professor of Modern Indian History ( Retd), Centre for Historical Studies, JNU)

Date and Time:   19  November  2023  at 6PM (IST)

Join Zoom Meeting @

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86513111767?pwd=QVpiNFFjZ29EcXlOVkdGeEYvUlNFZz09

Meeting ID: 832 5557 3077

Passcode:  577875

It will also be live streamed at:

facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.com 

Summary :

In his lifetime, Jawaharlal Nehru was recognized the world over as a statesman and an Indian leader second only to Gandhiji. A foremost leader of the freedom struggle, who gave it a decided socialist orientation, he remained unrivalled as Prime Minister after independence and built the solid foundations of a sovereign, secular, democratic, and egalitarian republic. He evolved the concept of non-alignment which enabled many ex-colonial countries to avoid becoming a part of the two power blocs engaged in the Cold War.

However, he is today the favourite whipping boy of the establishment.  We are told he was responsible for the partition, for the mess in Kashmir, for the death of Subhas Bose, for delaying the integration of Hyderabad, and of Goa, for the defeat at the hands of China in 1962, for neglecting agriculture, and primary education, and much else. The reason for the defamation is of course that he stood for the exact opposite of what is valued today. His life and work present a continuous question mark to the regressive trends in fashion.

This will become evident as we focus in the talk especially on two areas of great relevance today in which we are facing a grave crisis: Democracy and Civil liberties, and Communalism/Secularism. We will also focus attention on Nehru’s evolving understanding of  Mahatma Gandhi’s vision and method of non-violent struggle, of which he became the most ardent advocate after his death.

      

Speaker :

Author of many books, Prof Mukherjee has been a visiting Scholar at Duke University, USA, and at the Institute of Oriental Culture, University of Tokyo and was also Director of Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, ( NMML), New Delhi.

She has published widely in the areas of agrarian history, peasant movements, social movements and the Indian national movement.

Here is a list of a few of her publications :

Colonializing Agriculture , The Myth of Punjab Exceptionalism Sage (2005) ;  Peasants in India’s Non Violent Revolution : Practice and Theory (Sage 2004).

This list also includes India’s Struggle for Independence (1999) and India After Independence 1947–2000 (2000), RSS, School Texts and the Murder of Mahatma Gandhi The Hindu Communal Project (2008) co-authored with Prof Bipan Chandra and others.

(Democracy Dialogue lecture Video) India’s Democratic Longevity and its Hugely Troubled Trajectory By Professor Ashutosh Varshney

Professor Ashutosh Varshney ( Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences at Brown University ), delivered the 25th Democracy Dialogues Lecture on 15 October, 2023.

Summary

India celebrated 75 years of its independence last year with a lot of enthusiasm.

Celebrations did not hide the fact it is also one of the leading countries which is passing through what is popularly known as 'democratic backsliding'.

A country which, like many others, is using democratic processes to secure undemocratic outcomes, where freely contested elections are being deployed for the purpose of expressing, cultivating, or enhancing majoritarian prejudices—to target minorities and turn them into lesser citizens.

In this scenario, there is an urgent need to unpack this journey of democratic India further , there is a need to make a distinction between India as an electoral democracy and India as a liberal democracy.

Background Reading for the talk :

# India’s Democratic Longevity and its Hugely Troubled Trajectory ( Attached with this mail)

#. How India's Ruling Party Erodes Democracy

Ashutosh Varshney

Journal of Democracy, Volume 33, Number 4, October 2022, pp. 104-118 (Article)

https://static1.squarespace.com/.../project_muse_866645.pdf

Speaker

Prof Ashutosh Varshney is Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University, where he also directs the Center for Contemporary South Asia. Previously, he taught at Harvard (1989-98) and the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor (2001-2008).

His books include Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy (2013), Collective Violence in Indonesia (2009), Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale 2002), India in the Era of Economic Reforms (1999), and Democracy, Development and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India (Cambridge 1995)