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BETWEEN 1946 AND 1952, the British Raj, the world’s largest colony,
was transformed into the Republic of India, the world’s largest democracy.
Independence, the Constituent Assembly Debates, the founding of the
Republic, and India’s first universal franchise general election took place
amid the violence and displacement of the Partition, the uncertain and
contested integration of the princely states, and the forceful quelling of
internal dissent and revolutionary challenges to the Indian state. This book
tells the story of these transformations as a history of sovereignty and de-
mocracy in India. It investigates the ways in which violence constituted a
postcolonial regime of sovereignty and shaped the historical development
of democracy in India at the foundational moment of decolonization and
national independence. |