Overview: Polity, Society, Economy

This module is an undergraduate final-year 30 CATS Special Subject. Students are not expected to have studied India previously.

Why would a woman join a march holding a sign that reads: ‘We came to learn, we did not come to die’? In order to answer this and other thorny questions, this module examines key events and movements in India during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Major topics include: the rise of the Hindu right, the rise of historically oppressed groups as a political force (such as Dalits and lower castes), and the rise of globalization as everyday practice and as economic orthodoxy.

Students undertake close analysis of different kinds of 'primary sources': published scholarship, archival documents, films and oral testimony.

In short, this module introduces students to the study of India’s contemporary history and the nature of – and prospects for – postcolonial democracies.
 

• Assessment
• Seminars
• Resources
• Hall of Fame (recent undergraduate dissertations that have appeared in press)
• Feedback