Nair, Neeti

A survey course, major topics include conflict and accommodation in the Indo-Islamic world; change and continuity under colonial rule; competing ideas on the shape and substance of a new India; and the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947. This course is the first of a two-semester sequence: in the spring we will focus on Twentieth century South Asia.

This seminar will introduce advanced undergraduate and graduate students to writings on the relationship between education and citizenship in India. We will begin with tracing the relationship between education and the crafting of new demands in the colonial period, engage with the new literature on rights and duties of citizens that were first developed in the immediate aftermath of Partition, and conclude with discussions on citizenship and rights that have, following recent legislation, witnessed a resurgence.

The Partition of India has been the defining political misstep in twentieth century South Asia, confounding centuries of fluid identities in one sweeping irreversible decision. In this course we examine the texture of life in pre-Partition Punjab, the United Provinces (UP) and Bengal; detail the denouement in political negotiations that culminated in Partition; consider the violence that became constitutive of Partition; and mark the enormous consequences of the international boundary line separating India from Pakistan and later, Bangladesh.