Democracy Dialogues Series 37

Organised by New Socialist Initiative
Theme : Anti-Colonial Constitutionalism and the Defence of India’s Democracy

Speaker : Prof Sugata Bose

Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University, ex Member of Parliament

Live streamed at Facebook ( facebook.com/newsocialistinitiative.nsi).
Abstract : 

When South Asia won freedom from British colonial rule in 1947, some of the finest and most far-sighted ideas in the realm of anti-colonial thought lost out in the struggle for power at the helm of post-colonial states. Foremost among these was the imperative of power-sharing arrangements between the federal center and the constituent units. Against British attempts to impose centralized despotism by establishing the rule of (lawless) laws, patriotic Indians forged a robust political and intellectual tradition of anti-colonial constitutionalism. We need to engage in a creative process of historical retrieval of visions for substantive democracy and federal union during the struggle for freedom that remained unrealized in India during the post-colonial transition including the Constitution-making process. Some of the finest proposals offered in the form of amendments in the Constituent Assembly were negatived. A re-engagement with those ideas will enable us to better face the challenges of authoritarianism in the present and provide the basis for a more equitable and democratic national and global order.

About the Speaker :

Sugata Bose is the Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University. Prior to taking up the Gardiner Chair at Harvard in 2001, Bose was a Fellow of St. Catharine’s College, University of Cambridge, and Professor of History and Diplomacy at Tufts University.

Bose was educated at Presidency College, Calcutta, and the University of Cambridge where he obtained his Ph.D. His many books include Modern South Asia: History, Culture, Political Economy (with Ayesha Jalal, 5th edition 2022), A Hundred Horizons: The Indian Ocean in the Age of Global Empire (2006), His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle against Empire (2011, 10th anniversary edition 2022), The Nation as Mother and other visions of nationhood (2017) and, most recently, Asia after Europe: Imagining a Continent in the Long Twentieth Century (2024). Bose has jointly with Sisir Kumar Bose edited the 12-volume Collected Works of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. 

Sugata Bose served as a Member of Parliament in India elected to the 16th Lok Sabha (2014-2019) representing the Jadavpur constituency in Bengal and throughout that period as a member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs.