Year 4: The 'Long' 1950s

Published on: Apr 17, 2007

One way of understanding the present conjuncture in South Asia is to see it as the dismantling of complex political, economic and socio-cultural structures that were installed half a century ago and their replacement by new structures and institutions that are still in gestation. While contemporary crises of democracy (as expressed in varied idioms), the rise of new economic classes, domestic and foreign alignments, and the cultural 'legitimacy crisis' in this region each bear the stamp of their place of origin, taken all together they speak in different ways to a fundamental change underway in regional relations of production, power and meaning. But what exactly is being transformed?

We propose that understanding the current regional transformation opens up the possibility of and indeed requires returning to the "originary" moment of post colonial South Asia. In other words, we propose to examine the 'long' 1950s as the starting point for the making of post-colonial South Asia, the moment when a radically new set of political, economic and socio-cultural transformations and institutions were being set in place. This examination, we believe, is necessary both to better understand that very important (and relatively understudied) period as well as to set the stage more effectively for understanding the present.

Another, more prosaic, way of saying this is that we seek to inaugurate a new dialogue between modern historians and the rest of the social sciences. For too long the arbitrary temporal boundary of the "colonial" and the "postcolonial," or, before and after independence (for much of the South Asian region), has marked the limits of historical work and the interests of political science, sociology, geography, anthropology, and other disciplinary fields in this part of the world. In a new century, and with the availability of new archives, evidence, methods and questions, we think it is time to return to that artificial boundary and re-examine the assumed self-evident and occasionally nostalgic moment captured by the idea of the "Fifties."

By the "Fifties," we are not tied to a strict chronological period - the fifties, in different parts of South Asia, could range from 1945 until about 1965, and that indeterminacy is an element of the problematic we seek to open up. What we mean by the Fifties is the beginning of a new period in South Asian histories, in political, cultural, social and economic terms, that roughly coincides with the decade of 1950-60.

Suggested Themes
The significant transformations of that moment include (but are not limited to):

1. The nationalization of the economy.
   
2. The new ideology of 'Developmentalism'.
   
3. Emergence of new forms of social and cultural capital.
   
4. New understandings of law in relation to citizenship and minorities.
   
5. All varieties of language, autonomy and social movements.
   
6. Invention of new national and local traditions.
   
7. The founding of new (political, economic, cultural, educational, policy) institutions.
   
8. Efflorescence of artistic, cultural and literary production.
   
9. New modes and patterns in international relations.
   
10. The first elections, coups and conspiracies.

Given the peculiar combination of familiarity and distance that characterizes this period for someone writing in the early 21st century, the applications we seek to encourage must identify the elements of novelty in the particular issue or problem they want to discuss. Novelty can be linked to new interpretations of well known events or problems, identification of new events as being more important than existing historiography suggests, or the use of new sources of evidence which have become available.

Fellowship proposals must be self-consciously inter-disciplinary in nature and should try to frame their research questions in ways that would appeal to a selection committee composed of social scientists and humanists from a variety of countries and disciplines.