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A Legal and Political History (1774-1950)

By Mithi Mukherjee, associate professor of history

This pioneering research offers a sweeping new interpretation of the complex and seemingly contradictory nature of Indian democracy and polity. In contrast to much of existing scholarship, it joins the colonial and postcolonial periods in Indian history into a seamless narrative.

“India in the Shadows of Empire” explains the postcolonial Indian polity by presenting an alternative historical narrative of the British Empire in India and India’s struggle for independence.

It pursues this narrative along two major trajectories. On the one hand, it focuses on the role of imperial judicial institutions and practices in the making of both the British Empire and the anti-colonial movement under the Congress, with the lawyer as political leader.

On the other hand, it offers a novel interpretation of Gandhi’s non-violent resistance movement as being different from the Congress. It shows that the Gandhian movement, as the most powerful force largely responsible for India’s independence, was anchored not in western discourses of political and legislative freedom but rather in Indic traditions of renunciative freedom, with the renouncer as leader.

This volume offers a comprehensive and new reinterpretation of the Indian Constitution in the light of this historical narrative. India in the Shadows of Empire contends that the British colonial idea of justice and the Gandhian ethos of resistance have been the two competing and conflicting driving forces that have determined the nature and evolution of the Indian polity after independence.

Ambitious, original and thought-provoking, this book will be indispensable for students and scholars of Indian history, the British Empire, legal-constitutional history, political science, and sociology. It will also interest anybody seeking a broad understanding of the mainsprings of modern Indian history and politics.

“This is a truly original and path-breaking book in more ways than one can list. It provides an innovative history of the construction of the idea of justice and its institutional locations in modern India. … It presents a refreshingly original reading of the relationship between discourses of law, justice and sovereignty. In doing so, it opens up a veritable new research agenda on the relationship between power and politics in Indian history. The book contains a wealth of new archival material. But it also brings freshness to familiar material. The book is unfailingly stimulating and will transform your thinking about how power is legitimized and contested.”

—Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President, Center for Policy Research, New Delhi

“This is an enormously ambitious book that makes good on its intention to offer a legal and political history of India over the past two centuries. …. This book will offer rich and illuminating insights not only to those interested in India’s imperial association, but also to those engaged with the vexations of public policy in independent India.”

—Uday S. Mehta, Clarence Francis Professor in the Social Sciences, Amherst College