From Raj to the Republic : A Political History of India (1935-2000)

Contents: Introduction. 1. India in 1935. 2. Of men and parties. 3. The sun sets over the empire. 4. The partition. 5. The birth of nations. 6. Nehru’s Foreign Policy. 7. The world’s largest democracy. 8. From one war to another (1962-1965). 9. The intermezzo: Lal Bahadur Shastri (9 June 1964-11 January 1966). 10. The Barons of the Congress Party defeated (1966-1969). 11. India-Pakistan the third round. 12. From victory to defeat from the elections of 1971-72 to the emergency. 13. The emergency. 14. The Janata interlude: an experiment in alternation. 15. The dynastic Republic Indira II. 16. Rajiv: the end of a dynasty. 17. A replay of Janata politics. 18. The Congress Party and the politics of reform. A few stray thoughts to conclude. Annexures. Select bibliography. Index.

From the Foreword: "The history of India’s struggle for independence, the catastrophe of partition that occurred at its achievement, and the successful establishment of a competitive parliamentary system against the nearly overwhelming difficulties its leaders faced after independence and against the nearly universal trends elsewhere in postcolonial societies is one of the greatest stories of the twentieth century. It is a story that virtually all scholars of Indian history and politics feel a compulsion to comprehend through the telling and retelling of it to ourselves, to each other, and to our students. It has spawned endless discussion from many angles.

Jean Alphonse Bernard, a diplomat turned scholar, with long experience in the French foreign service in India and an absorption since then in contemporary Indian political and diplomatic history, has chosen to retell this story from the perspectives of its leading participants by analyzing the critical decisions they made. He asks how such momentous decisions as the partition of the subcontinent, the integration of the princely states, the establishment of a particular type of federal system, the launching of three wars between the successor states, the imposition of an Emergency regime and its relaxation in post-Independence India were made and ponders the implications of them all. He tries to put himself in the place of the leaders who made these decisions, to understand their goals and motives. He sometimes arrives at insights through counterfactual speculation concerning what might have happened had a different decision been made, sometimes by noting that there were alternative proposals at the time that might have been adopted with different consequences." (jacket)