Bipan Chandra

Bio: Bipan Chandra is an academic researcher from Jawaharlal Nehru University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Cultural imperialism & Colonialism. The author has an hindex of 3, co-authored 4 publications receiving 44 citations.

Colonialism, stages of colonialism and the colonial state

Abstract: (1980). Colonialism, stages of colonialism and the colonial state. Journal of Contemporary Asia: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 272-285.

P.C. Joshi and the National Politics

Abstract: This is a short political profile of P.C. Joshi underlying his relationship with the Communist Party of India (CPI). This article seeks to engage with Joshi and the CPI (in Joshi years) as a political organization, and to understand the reasons for its limited outreach. It also seeks to address the issue of CPI's and Joshi's, in particular, opinion on Gandhian and Nehruvian ideas to attain independence. Chandra argues that Joshi did not accept the notion that in colonial countries nationalism was a bourgeois concept and that this concept clashed with internationalism. Instead he put forth the notion of multiple loyalties to party, people and India. He did not see any clash among these three loyalties either.P.C. Joshi started out with the Workers and Peasants Party holding the position of the General Secretary in 1928 until he joined the CPI formally in 1929. In late 1935 Joshi became the General Secretary of CPI, holding the position for twelve years. Joshi also had a long standing with students and youn...

Class, power, and patronage: the landed elite and politics in Pakistani Punjab

Abstract: Following their conquest of Punjab, the British erected an administrative apparatus that relied heavily upon the support of the province’s powerful landed elite. The relationship between the two was one of mutual benefit, with the British using their landed allies to ensure the maintenance of order and effective economic accumulation in exchange for state patronage. Over a century and a half later, the politics of Pakistani Punjab continues to be dominated by landowning politicians, despite significant societal changes that could have potentially eroded their power. In order to answer the question of why this is so, this thesis uses a historical institutionalist approach to argue that the administrative framework emerging out of the initial bargain between the colonial state and the landed classes gave rise to a path-dependent process of institutional development in Punjab that allowed the latter to increasingly entrench themselves within the political order during the colonial and post-colonial periods. In doing so, the landed elite were also able to reinforce their bargain with the colonial state and, after independence, the Pakistani military establishment, perpetuating a relationship that facilitated the pursuit of the interests of the actors involved. In order to account for this path-dependent process of institutional development, this thesis treats the initial period of colonial rule in Punjab as a ‘critical juncture’, tracing the factors that led the British to rely on the landed elite for support, and enter into the bargain between the two actors that drove subsequent institutional developments. The thesis then explores the mechanisms used to perpetuate this arrangement over time, focusing in particular on the use, by the state and the landed elite, of legislative interventions, bureaucratic power, and electoral politics, to reinforce and reproduce the institutional framework of politics in Punjab. Finally, the thesis also looks at points in time during which this dominant institutional path has been challenged, albeit unsuccessfully, with a view towards understanding both the circumstances under which such challenges can emerge, and the lessons that can be learnt from these episodes with regards to the prospects for the creation of a democratic and participatory politics in the province.

‘De-industrialization’, Industrialization and the Indian Economy, c. 1850–1947

Abstract: The purpose of this short discussion paper is to raise some general questions concerning the current state of the historiography on the industrialization of pre-Independent India. Although triggered off by a close reading of Professor Morris's contribution to the recent Cambridge Economic History of India, volume 2, it is not my intention to review the essay in a detailed and systematic manner; rather I seek to place it in the wider context of what is, in my view, the unsatisfactory state of our accumulated knowledge. The paper is organized in the following way. Section II contends that all too little is known about a seemingly crucial sector—a vacuity that is not confined to India alone among the Third World economies—and that this tends to distort accounts of the general functioning of the international economy. In Section III I try to pinpoint the major areas of weakness, and then go on to suggest the main reasons for this somewhat surprising situation. Finally, in Section IV, I argue that Morris's study reflects the problems I identify but does not take us further down the road towards their resolution.

Netherlands East Indies: The Large Colonial Surplus of Indonesia, 1878‐1939

Abstract: Surprisingly few previous contributions to estimates of Indonesia's colonial surplus have been made, all of them using the export surplus method. Having defined the colonial surplus, the export surplus method is rejected here as unnecessary and misleading. The Indies balance of payments data are used critically for the first time. Adding missing items and further analysing an odd but very big private item much larger estimates of the colonial surplus are produced. A comparison with the colonial surplus of British India is made. In all, the new colonial surplus for the Netherlands East Indies is estimated at almost 24 billion guilders, approximately US$10 billion or some US$156 billion in today's terms. Those figures are considered large indeed.

The 'Third World' and Socio-Legal Studies: Neo-Liberalism and Lessons from India's Legal Innovations

Abstract: A terse, brief order of the Supreme Court of India in the Networking of Rivers case in September 2002 impugns the role of public interest litigation in the wake of neoliberal reforms. At a poignant moment in India's 'tryst with destiny', socio-legal studies in India stand disarmed and disempowered without adequate conceptual and theoretical tools to analyse and interpret the event in emancipatory ways. The case inaugurates a new phase in judicial activism and Public Interest Litigation in India, a subject that has been written about extensively both in India and elsewhere. In this article the Networking of Rivers case is used as a vehicle to explore the trajectories of developments in socio-legal studies in India and the ways in which it may have contributed to the present theoretical and conceptual impasse. The article argues for a more geo-historically differentiated understanding of the theoretical underpinnings of socio-legal studies in India and the 'Third World' generally.