Indian National Congress Research Articles

Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose: Contributions of a Revolutionary to Indian Social Reforms and Indian Industrial Relations

NetajiSubhas Chandra Bose –the fiery Indian revolutionary has been in the news during 2015 and 2016 in connection with the declassification of files about his mysterious disappearance after 18th of August 1945. Of late, maximum research and writings on the leader have been about the mystery and associated theories connected with his disappearance, with the Indian Prime Minister himself taking a keen interest. It is largely History and to some extent Political Science, which as academic disciplines, has incorporated Subhas Chandra Bose as “Topic of Study/Research”. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had an in-depth knowledge of not only the Indian Society but also Japanese and European Society. He was a very keen observer of Indian Society and with his keen observation and constant interaction with a wide section of the general public during his constant travels, both within India and abroad, he was aware of various social problems particular to India and its magnitude. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose was also fully aware of the British Colonial interests (the cunning-oppressive Agenda) who did not want the total eradication of social problems,especially that of caste and communal rivalry. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose had practical experience in Indian Industrial Relations as an Outside Trade Union Leader of various major trade unions and President of the first Indian Trade Union Federation-The All India Trade Union Congress (AITUC). As the President of India’s most powerful political party, the Indian National Congress (INC), for two consecutive terms, Netaji’s contacts with Indian leaders belonging to different groups/associations including trade unionists, and general public those days was next only to Mahatma Gandhi. All these broadened his horizon and called for constant observation and study of Indian Society on a day to day basis. Netaji also donned the role of conciliator and arbitrator during industrial disputes. Thus his ideas and writings on these areas were a result of practical experience. Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose also tried his level best to ameliorate the social status of Indians and was particularly concerned about the plight of Indian labour and farmers. This Article focuses on the role of NetajiSubhas Chandra Bose in Social Reforms and Industrial Relations and aims at highlighting the fact that Bose can be an interesting ‘Topic of Research’ even in Sociology, especially Sociology of Indian Social Reforms, Sociology of Indian Industrial Relations and Military Sociology.

A Dying Ideal: Non-Racialism and Political Parties in Post-Apartheid South Africa

Non-racialism as a concept has a rich and contentious history in South African politics. For many it was a core feature of the struggle against apartheid, uniting a range of forces fighting for a society free from racial discrimination. Indeed it is a central tenet in South Africa’s Constitution, forming a core part of the ‘founding provisions’ of the country. However, there is widespread contestation over what the concept entails, both theoretically and in practical terms. This article examines the concept of non-racialism primarily through the lens of South Africa’s largest political opposition party, the Democratic Alliance (DA), but relates its approach to that of the African National Congress (ANC). How has the DA conceptualised and instrumentalised the vision of non-racialism, historically and in post-apartheid South Africa? This article argues that neither the DA nor the ANC has been able to do so coherently. The idea of non-racialism is a fracture that deeply divides both parties; this division is also one that originated historically for both parties. The article concludes that there is a clear shift in how the DA envisaged non-racialism during apartheid and how the party instrumentalises the concept today, and that this change echoes, to some extent, the experiences of the ANC. Both parties now equate non-racialism to multiracialism, on the one hand, and a (interim) racialisation of politics on the other. This raises the question of whether non-racialism, as conceived by some in the early days of the Congress alliance, is a dying ideal.

Uncolonizable: Freedom in the Muslim mind in colonial British India

ABSTRACTDoes Islam offer a vision of freedom? What did freedom’s imagination look like to the colonized Muslims of the Indian subcontinent? In this article, I engage the imagination of freedom of two revolutionary middle actors – Fazal Illahi, a mullah, and Iqbal Shedai, a self-styled middle-class rebel. Drawing upon the Islamic concept of the free human, these men developed a concept of azadi (freedom) making the colonized subjects of British India aware of the issues of dignity and natural human rights, which was more expansive in scope than political freedom that was demanded by the national leaders of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League. Further, by collaborating with anti-imperial internationalists in Europe, these men elevated India’s freedom struggle into an international agenda. By engaging the Islamic concept of freedom and making it an inclusive project for decolonization, the middle actors raised a critical question of the relationship between Islam and the state. I read their freedom imagination by engaging Malik Bennabi’s theory of (un)colonializability and the twelfth-century Islamic philosopher Ibn Arabi’s concept of hayrah (perplexity). I argue that Illahi and Shedai’s interpretation of azadi expands our understanding of freedom as an unenclosed horizon of possibilities, yet to be realized in the subcontinent.

Migration as Subtle Catalyst: Institution Building in India

This research paper captures role of immigrants in building political, social, religious and economic institutes in India. Their role is in all spheres of building institutes ranging from intellectual, social, political, educational, financial and physical contribution. The institutes in which they played a role are of wide range; Indian National Congress and Constitution of India, Indian Independence Movement and many political institutes are few of them.

The Partisan Nature of Race and Imperialism: Dadabhai Naoroji, M. M. Bhownaggree and the Late Nineteenth-Century British Politics of Indian Nationalism

ABSTRACTThis article examines Dadabhai Naoroji's and Mancherjee Merwanjee Bhownaggree's contribution to politically partisan ideologies on Indian empire as London MPs and reform advocates late in the nineteenth century. Exploring politically nuanced, cultural definitions of racial difference, this article reveals how their participation in British parliamentary and press debate on Indian nationalism adhered to distinct liberal and conservative imperial political conceptions of race and governance during this period. Beyond an analysis of Naoroji and the Indian National Congress's relationship with British liberalism, this essay explores Bhownaggree's contribution to a sustained conservative imperial tradition. This article postulates that Edmund Burke's separation from a liberal imperial rationality and a British Tory critique of liberalism informed a nineteenth-century conservative governing justification in India predicated on conciliating organic national racial difference. As Naoroji's devotion, as a Liberal MP for Central Finsbury (1892–95), to a liberal civilising mission informed an advocacy of political self-governance in Britain and India, Bhownaggree's pursuit of female and technical education reform while Conservative MP for Bethnal Green N.E. (1895–1905) represented a conservative espousal of racial difference.

Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea

Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea

Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea

Muslim Zion: Pakistan as a Political Idea

Jayaprakash Narayan, Indian National Congress and Party Politics, 1934–1954

Jayaprakash Narayan, better remembered for his exploits in the Quit India movement of 1942, social work in the 1960s and his call for a ‘Total Revolution’ in 1974, was also a leading Congress socialist between 1934 and 1948, as well as active in non-Congress socialist politics till 1954. An admirer of Jawaharlal Nehru, he was a vocal critic of Vallabhbhai Patel. A radical with pronounced leftist tendencies, he was a bête noire of an elite-based politics of capitalist, communitarian and majoritarian impulses. Twice a member of Congress Working Committee, he was repeatedly invited by Nehru to join his government after Patel’s death and was spoken of as Nehru’s successor in the 1950s. These somewhat overshadowed aspects of his political life, in comparison to his social leadership, make it an important prism of Congress politics, its culture of ‘control and consensus’ and characteristics of ‘continuity and change’ with the colonial state.

Local funds and political competition: Evidence from the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in India

The National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) in India is one of the largest public employment programs in the developing world. It was introduced by the central government led by Indian National Congress (INC). While it's implementation is, in principle, based on demand for work from households, we investigate how political competition affects intra district allocation of funds under the scheme. Using longitudinal data on funds allocated to blocks and elections held for block councils, we find that greater amount of funds were allocated to blocks where INC had lower seat share. Further, we address the issue of endogeneity by focusing on a subsample of blocks where the aggregate vote share of INC was close to that of it's rivals. Our results suggest that 1.5 percentage point more funds were approved for blocks that had 1 percentage point lower seat share for INC. We also provide a mechanism for the effect by showing that the results are only true when the MP of the district, a member of the body that approves the block fund allocation, is from INC.

Secret Party: South African Communists between 1950 and 1960

Since 1990 a rich body of autobiographical writing and interview testimony together with freshly available archival materials can support an assessment of the role played by South African communists in anti-apartheid opposition during the 1950s. Numbering only a few hundred, communists were very influential in leadership positions in the Congress Alliance and shaped programmes and actions in accordance with their own strategy of a united front. This article explores the ways on which the party established its own organisational structures as well as considering the extent and impact of its wider concerns.

Globalization, Nationalism and the Text of Kichaka-Vadha: The First English Translation of the Marathi Anticolonial Classic, with a Historical Analysis of Theatre in British India . Rakesh Solomon (review)

Reviewed by: Globalization, Nationalism and the Text of Kichaka-Vadha: The First English Translation of the Marathi Anticolonial Classic, with a Historical Analysis of Theatre in British India. Rakesh Solomon Kedar A. Kulkarni GLOBALIZATION, NATIONALISM AND THE TEXT OF KICHAKA-VADHA: THE FIRST ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF THE MARATHI ANTICOLONIAL CLASSIC, WITH A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THEATRE IN BRITISH INDIA. Translated and introduced by Rakesh Solomon. London: Anthem Press, 2014. xi + 166 pp., 20 photographs. Hardcover, $99.00 (£60.00). The “golden age” of drama in Marathi lasted for a period of approximately forty years, from 1880 to 1920, when playwrights, intellectuals, and often nationalist politicians worked closely to produce a flowering of Marathi drama. Some collaborated to assert themselves against a brutally oppressive British colonial regime. One such playwright, Krishna Prabhakar Khadilkar (1872–1948), had a parallel career as a journalist and newspaper editor, and closely liaised with Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856–1920), India’s firebrand nationalist politician who had articulated the need for independence from Britain. During Khadilkar’s theatrical career, he penned fifteen plays, out of which six were prose-plays and nine were music-dramas. Nearly all are steeped in a deep social or political awareness. Solomon’s translation of Kichaka-Vadha (1907; The Slaying of Kichaka) is the first translation of any Marathi-language play from this period, and is a great resource for pedagogical purposes. His introduction also adds to the growing body of English-language scholarship on Marathi and Indian drama more broadly from the late colonial and modern periods, but is only a qualified success. According to Solomon, Kichaka-Vadha is based on an episode from the epic Mahabharata, when five brothers, the Pandavas, and their wife, Draupadi, are in exile incognito at the court of King Virata. During this time, a powerful general at Virata’s court, Kichaka, begins to harass Draupadi, known as Sairandhri in the play. In the hands of Khadilkar, this episode is transformed into a larger political allegory for the early twentieth century. As Solomon explains in the introduction to his volume and in a previous essay (Solomon 1994), the disagreement between Kankabhatta (Yudhisthira) and [End Page 698] Ballabha (Bhima) over how to deal with Kichaka is designed to remind audiences of the conflicts between the liberal and extremist wings of the Indian National Congress Party (est. 1885), the primary organization opposing British rule. In Khadilkar’s allegory, Kankabhatta, with his concerns over justice and placating Kichaka, most closely resembles the liberal wing of the Congress party, headed by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, who “advocated working within British colonial law, i.e., using exclusively constitutional and peaceful means” (p. 31). By contrast, Kankabhatta’s immediately younger brother, Ballabha, is quicker to anger and voices the need for action; he resembles the Extremists, led by Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Aurobindo Ghosh, who “insisted on using all available means, including unconstitutional and direct or violent action” (p. 31). Meanwhile, Kichaka represents the hated viceroy of India, Lord Curzon (in office 1899–1905). Thus, The Slaying of Kichaka becomes a complex allegory about the indecisiveness of and infighting within the Congress Party, the abuse of India at the hands of Lord Curzon, and the need for violent rebellion. As a result of the layered epic and allegorical tropes, this play, like many others, was more or less “illegible” to the British censors at first and therefore difficult to proscribe. First performed in 1907, Kichaka-Vadha was not proscribed until 1910, during which time audiences were well aware of its political message as colonial administrators clamored to find a satisfying resolution to the tumult it had caused. In Solomon’s volume, the translation closely approximates the Marathi original, and it is faithful to the Marathi Text. The introduction, however, misses many opportunities. Despite the vibrant theatrical scene that produced the “golden age” of Marathi theatre, this period remains inaccessible to non-Marathi speakers. Solomon’s translation provides an entry into that world; it includes photographs that enable us to visualize the performances and begin to understand the radical power of epic, religion, myth, and allegory during the “golden age.” For these reasons, the translation, on its own, is a valuable and welcome one...

Beyond the Politics of Identity: The Left and the Politics of Caste and Identity in Tamil Nadu, 1920–63

Wedged uncomfortably between the gathering pan-Indian nationalist movement and the locally resonant and divisive anti-Brahman, Tamil ethno-nationalist movement, Left leaders in the Tamil region in India were faced with a difficult and complex set of political choices and challenges in the early twentieth century. These political challenges brought to the fore the social and political contradictions between an anti-colonial Indian nationalism led mostly by upper-caste liberal–bourgeois leaders and an equally entrenched and locally resonant ethno-nationalist movement which, despite its social reformist and anti-Brahman platform, was led by dominant non-Brahman caste leaders committed to the continuation of British rule. In this paper, we will be looking at two of the most prominent Tamil Left leaders who attempted to work with and bridge these contradictory movements in Tamil society. M. Singaravelu (1860–1946) and P. Jeevanandam (1907–63) were prominent Left leaders and intellectuals in the Tamil region and were well known for their close engagement with and sensitivity to issues of social reform, caste and linguistic and cultural hegemony. Both joined various political movements including the Indian National Congress, the Dravidian movement and the Indian communist party in different phases of their careers. It is their participation and engagement with such diverse and contradictory movements that make their intellectual interventions unique and a close study of their work valuable for providing a window into how the Left attempted to deal with such thorny issues as the politics of caste and language in India.

The following piece is based on an interview, conducted by Arianna Lissoni, with author Sylvia Neame on the occasion of the launch of her book, The Congress Movement: The Unfolding of the Congress Alliance, 1912–1961, vols 1-3 (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2015)

The following piece is based on an interview, conducted by Arianna Lissoni, with author Sylvia Neame on the occasion of the launch of her book, The Congress Movement: The Unfolding of the Congress Alliance, 1912–1961, vols 1-3 (Cape Town, HSRC Press, 2015)

Civil Contract of Photography in India

Pinney’s essay explores, in the context of both colonized and contemporary India, Ariella Azoulay’s argument about the prophetic nature of photographic citizenship. The use of photographs in a number of key Indian National Congress reports reveals the destabilizing potential of the camera. This photographic counter-narrative presents a challenge to certain Althusserian and Foucauldian accounts for which the state is ultimately the arbiter of “evidence.” As Pinney shows, political claims could be advanced in the space of photography that were disallowed in everyday life. This possibility was predicated on smaller and faster apparatuses, that is, a changing technics of media. However, in contemporary India an increasingly miniaturized technics is provoking widespread anxieties about the public visibility of what was formerly private and intimate. The changing form of photographic technics thus drives a social narrative that transforms the camera as a utopian tool of liberation into a dystopian means of transgression.

Freedom Movement and the Fourth Estate- Gandhian Perspectives

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi has today become an iconic figure, a symbol of many things for many people. He is seen variously as the great opponent of European Colonism,as a champion of civil rights for racial, religious and other minorities, as an important critic of the industrial system of production, as a great pacifist, or as a person who stood for the need to resist injustice in a non-violent way. In the process, he developed the new technique of civil resistance now universally known as Satyagraha. His political, social and spiritual development during those years led to his manifesto of 1909-Hind Swaraj or Indian Self-rule a work that was considered so scandalous by the British. Gandhi returned to India in 1915 and after a period of settling in soon established himself as a champion of the peasantry, leading to confrontations with white indigo planters in Champaran in 1917 and the colonial tax bureaucracy in Kheda in 1918.He also led a successful strike in Ahmedabad. In 1917 he staged his first all India protest-the Rowlatt Satyagraha and followed this in 1920 by gaining control over the Indian National Congress and launching the Non-Cooperation Movement in which Indians withdrew their support for British Colonial institutions. This was followed in later years by two more powerful confrontations with the British-the Civil Disobedience Movement of 1930-1934 and the Quit India Movement of 1942.These movements were reflected through the Press which is the powerful media which forms the predominant role in molding the information of the public opinion. It reflects the political and socio-economic opinion of the people and emerges as an important source of information for framing the political scenario of a nation or a region according to the nature of its publication.

Political Rivalry through Internet: An Analysis of the Political Discourses between Rivals in India

This paper is an attempt to scrutinise the websites of the two leading national political parties in India: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian National Congress (INC). The effort is to examine the presence of these political parties on the social media and how the parties are connecting with the public. Issues occurring in the calendar months between April and June 2014 have been taken into consideration to compare and contrast the methods adopted by both the political parties in their communication strategies through the Internet.

Современная индийская политика и мир неприкасаемых

The article is devoted to the political performance of the Dalits - the former untouchables - on the political scene of modern India. Though the Dalits constitute a fourth of all population, until today they haven’t achieved great influence in Indian policy. There are only few Dalit party-players at the national level. A great success of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Uttar Pradesh several years ago is vanishing, and the Party's bad results in the last elections (national and regional) prove this negative tendency. In recent years, BSP faced internal divisions between its leader and party members as well as the lack of clear and constant strategy. The Party attempted to focus on broad layers of population from the Dalits to high castes, but started to lose the support of its core voters, i.e. the Dalits. The “Mody wave” during the last general elections in 2014 was able to catch Dalit voters practically in all states. Survey findings argue that the winner Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the new charismatic prime-minister Narendra Modi challenged the Indian National Congress (INK), a traditional supporter of the Dalits, in most of issues. Dalit parties could hardly compose a strong alliance with other low castes parties, but their local leaders easily joined the current winner BJP. The Dalits face problems of their political identity, the lack of integration, and still act as “bank voters”, as usual.

The Conquest of Nature-A Critique on Tackling the Problems relating to it soon after India's Independence

During independence three quarters of the workforce was in agriculture, a sector which also contributed close to 60% of India’s gross domestic product. There was a small but growing industrial sector, which accounted for about 12% of the workforce, and 25% of G.D.P. There existed enormous variations in agricultural practices across the subcontinent. These variations notwithstanding, everywhere in India agriculture was largely empirical, based on knowledge and traditions passed down over the generations rather than on innovative or scientific ideas. To the Indian nationalist, however continuity was merely a euphemism for stagnation. Almost from the time the Congress was founded in 1885, Indian nationalism had charged the British with exploitation of the peasantry. They had resolved that when power came to them, agrarian reform would be at the top of the agenda. The socialist elements in the Indian National Congress pushed the organization to commit itself to thoroughgoing land reform, as in the abolition of large holdings, the promotion of the security of tenants and the redistribution of surplus land. Further if India had to be industrialized which model it should follow? The Indian people had to choose whether they will come into closer contact with the outer world and become responsive to its influences or remain secluded and indifferent. Action not sentiment had to be the determining factor.

Metamorphosis of Indian electoral campaigns: Modi's social media experiment

India's 2014 prime ministerial elections witnessed an unprecedented outcome, where the Bharatiya Janta Party callously defeated the Indian National Congress by majority votes, and Narendra Modi stood elected as the 15th prime minister of India. This outstanding electoral victory is being extensively debated and analysed across print and broadcast media for its remarkable campaigning strategies that successfully established a two way dialogue between the prime ministerial elect, Narendra Modi, and the voter population of India. The use of social media and adoption of campaigning tactics from the Obama US-presidential campaign have been centric to this winning campaign for brand NaMo. The amalgamation of social media and election campaigning has clearly redefined the face of political movements in India. The stratagem that team Modi followed to break the Congress era running in the country over the past decade will be concisely anatomised, with particular interest in the role and power of social media in giving a political party that winning edge over its opposition.

COLOUR,CULTURE,AND TRADITION OF INDIA IN THE POEMS OF SAROJINI NAIDU

Colour represents various moods of life. It is powerful means to communicate human feelings. Wide varied colours diversify each moment of our life. The sense of colour is as extended as the sense of LIFE. The folklore of a culture includes the stories, songs, and poems that people pass along from generation to generation. The word folklore meant “the Lore of the People.” It included all rituals, customs, traditions, and beliefs of unknown origin that expressed the concerns of the life ordinary people. Poetic imagery is a technique that is used to express feeling. In the visual, literary, and performing arts ‘Expressionism’ is a movement or tendency that strives to express subjective feelings and emotions rather than to depict reality or nature objectively. Sarojini Naidu was among the pioneer women poet, who was fascinated by the amazing diversity of Indian life, culture and tradition. Naidu. (1879 – 1949), was an Indian independence activist and poet. She was the second Indian woman to become the President of the Indian National Congress and was honored as ‘The Nightingale of India’ (Bharatiya Kokila). Being one of the most famous heroines of the 20th century, her birthday is celebrated as “National Women's Day”. Naidu voiced the dreams and aspirations of the making of the nation. She wrote mainly on the rural i.e. the folk aspects of Indian culture and women's experiences.