Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T07:53:10.875Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Parties and Electorates from Raj to Swaraj: An Historical Analysis of Electoral Behavior in Late Colonial and Early Independent India

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

William Vanderbok  and
Richard Sisson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Fascination with elite recruitment, ideology, and political strategy in the Indian nationalist movement has given rise to a wide range of scholarly studies about these phenomena. An extraordinarily rich literature has also developed dealing with provincial political movements during both the nationalist and postindependence periods. More recently a literature concerning local, “peoples’” history has started to develop and flourish, the most influential genre being the self-styled subaltern studies (see Guha, 1984–86; also Guha, 1983). Missing in the historiography of this vast and complex region are studies of those institutions that constituted the core of successive nationalist demands made for political reform—elections and representative institutions. Our study is a preliminary venture into the world of elections to provincial legislative institutions in late colonial and early independent India. The place of elections is not only important in understanding the decolonization process in India; it is of broad comparative interest in enhancing understanding of the democratization of regimes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Social Science History , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , Summer 1988 , pp. 121 - 142
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1988 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Amrita Bazar Patrika.Google Scholar
Bombay Chronicle.Google Scholar
Dominion of India (1948) Return Showing the Results of Elections to the Central Legislative Assembly and the Provincial Legislatures in 1945-46. Manager of Publications.Google Scholar
Gould, H. A. (1974) “The emergence of modern Indian politics: Political development in Faizabad, part I: 1884-1935 and part II: 1935 to independence.” Journal of Commonwealth Comparative Studies 12 (March and July): 20–41, 157-188.Google Scholar
Guha, R. (1983) Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Guha, R. [ed.] (1984-86) Subaltern Studies, Vols. 1-4. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hasan, M. (1988) “The Muslim mass contact campaign: Analysis of a strategy of political mobilization,” in Sisson, R. and Wolpert, S. (eds.) Congress and Indian Nationalism: The Preindependence Phase. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hindu.Google Scholar
Hindustan Times.Google Scholar
Johnson, G. (1973) Provincial Politics and Indian Nationalism: Bombay and the Indian National Congress, 1880-1915. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kumar, R. (1977) “From Swaraj to Purna Swaraj: Nationalist politics in the city of Bombay, 1920-1932,” in Low, D. A. (ed.) Congress and the Raj: Facets of the Indian Struggle, 1917-1947. New Delhi: Oxford University Press: 77–108.Google Scholar
Low, D. A. (1988) “Congress and ‘Mass Contacts,’ 1936-1937: Ideology, interests, and conflict over the basis of party representation,” in Sisson, R. and Wolpert, S. (eds.) Congress and Indian Nationalism: The Preindependence Phase. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
McCarthy, J. L. and Tukey, J. W. (1978) “Exploratory analysis of aggregate voting behavior: Presidential elections in New Hampshire, 1896-1972.” Social Science History 2: 292–331.Google Scholar
Pandey, G. (1978) The Ascendancy of the Congress in Uttar Pradesh, 1926-1934: A Study in Imperfect Mobilization. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ray, R. K. (1977) “Political change in British India.” Indian Economic and Social History Review 14: 493–517.Google Scholar
Reeves, P. D., Graham, B. D., and Goodman, J. M. (1975) A Handbook to Elections in Uttar Pradesh 1920-1951. Delhi: Manohar Book Service.Google Scholar
Robinson, F. (1975) Separatism Among Indian Muslims: The Politics of the United Province’s Muslims, 1860-1923. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Sarkar, S. (1983) Modern India, 1885-1947. New Delhi: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Sisson, R. and Shrader, L. L. (1985) “Legislative formation in pre-independent India: The issue of prerequisites for democratic regimes,” in Wallace, P. (ed.) Nation and Region in India. New Delhi: Oxford and IBH Publishing Co.: 197–219.Google Scholar
Sisson, R. and Vanderbok, W. (1983) “Mapping the Indian electorate: Trends in party support in seven national elections.” Asian Survey 23 (October): 1140–1158.Google Scholar
Sisson, R. and Vanderbok, W. (1984) “Mapping the Indian electorate II: Patterns of weakness in the Indian party system.” Asian Survey 24 (October): 1084–1097.Google Scholar
Sisson, R. and Wolpert, S. [eds.] (1988) Congress and Indian Nationalism: The Preindependence Phase. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Statesman (Calcutta).Google Scholar
Tukey, J. (1977) Exploratory Data Analysis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.Google Scholar