India of Our Times: An Experiment in Democracy | Released: 2010

This book explores the recent history of India-a history that focuses on the British Empire, and all that it did on the vast subcontinent during centruries of governance. While, it was neither planned nor premediated, the slow and complex historical process of British rule resulted in the unfolding of a new process of viable governance and modernisation that transformed the socio-economico-political map of India-a transformation India has never experienced before.

The British legacies-negative and positive-are enormous. While much has been written on the dark period of colonial repression inflicted by the British, this treatise focuses on the positive side of the British presence in India.

It is the purpose of this publication to show that establishment of ideological pragmatism, political pluralism, the initial enactment of social reforms, the introduction of self-governing institutions, and the introduction of technology are the legacies that remain an underniable part of post-independent India.

The British part, thus, has not been completely unking to India. What the country is today, and the direction in which it is heading are the results of the legacies that the British left, the foundations of which are still visible.


About the Author
Harish Kapur is professor emritus of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, Switzerland. Also he is the Director of the European Institute in Switzerland and India.

The author has spent much of his academic career teaching internationals relations, and monitoring Ph.D. Dissertations of students from different countries.

He was recipient of many awards from different European and US Foundations, including a two year grant from Rockfeller Foundation that resulted in his appointment as Research Assiicuate if tge Russian Research Centre at Harvard University.

Perhaps the most prestigious award he has received is that he has been nominated as the ourstanding intellectual in the 20th and 21st centuries, along with 1000 intellectuals from all over the world by the Cambridge International Biographical Centre in the United Kingdom.

Before joining the Institute in 1961, he functioned as The Deputy Legal Adviser in the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.


Table of Contents

• Preface


• Introduction


• Colonialism


• Nationalism


• Independence


• Political Democracy


• Mutating Economy


• Society : Increasing Complexity


• Leadership : A Growing Decline


• Summing Up


• Bibliography


• Index