Course Description

This course deploys historical thinking to events from the 1950s onwards, putting India’s post-independent history in conversation with contemporaneous world history. Students will learn about Nehruvian state-building in the 1950s, the successes and failures of Indian democracy, and the social, economic and ideological currents that shaped India during these decades. They will weave connections with critical global events and processes that marked the Post Second World War world, including decolonisation and the rise of varying sovereignties in Asia, Africa, and Latin America; the establishment of the post-1945 international world order, and the Cold War. The course will conclude by reflecting upon the historical processes which led to liberalisation in the 1990s.