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Podcast: New Books in Political Science
Episode: Nazmul Sultan, "Waiting for the People: The Idea of Democracy in Indian Anticolonial Thought" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Description: Indians, their former British rulers asserted, were unfit to rule themselves. Behind this assertion lay a foundational claim about the absence of peoplehood in India. The purported âbackwardnessâ of Indians as a people led to a democratic legitimation of empire, justifying self-government at home and imperial rule in the colonies.In response, Indian anticolonial thinkers launched a searching critique of the modern ideal of peoplehood. Waiting for the People: The Idea of Democracy in Indian Anticolonial Thought (Harvard University Press, 2024) is the first account of Indian answers to the question of peoplehood in political theory. This new book by...