THE JOINT CENTER FOR HISTORY AND ECONOMICS
TOWARD A FREE ECONOMY:
SWATANTRA AND OPPOSITION POLITICS IN DEMOCRATIC INDIA
Please join us for a discussion with the author and
Sudipta Kaviraj (Columbia University) and Amy Offner (University of Pennsylvania),
chaired by Ian Kumekawa (Harvard University).
Friday, September 8, 2023, 5:00pm
Belfer Case Study Room, CGIS South 020, 1730 Cambridge Street
A reception will follow the discussion - all are welcome.
Neoliberalism is routinely characterized as an antidemocratic, expert-driven project aimed at insulating markets from politics, devised in the North Atlantic and projected on the rest of the world. Revising this understanding, Toward a Free Economy shows how informal thinkers developed and communicated an economic conservatism informed by but distinct from neoliberalism as part of a democratic politics in the postcolonial world.
Twelve years after the British left India, a Swatantra (“Freedom”) Party came to life. It encouraged Indians to break with the Indian National Congress Party, which spearheaded the anticolonial nationalist movement and now dominated Indian democracy. Rejecting Congress’s heavy-industrial developmental state and the accompanying rhetoric of socialism, Swatantra promised “free economy” through its project of opposition politics.
As it circulated across various genres, “free economy” took on meanings that varied by region and language, caste and class, and won diverse advocates. These articulations, informed by but distinct from neoliberalism, came chiefly from communities in southern and western India as they embraced new forms of entrepreneurial activity. At their core, they connoted anticommunism, unfettered private economic activity, decentralized development, and the defense of private property.
Opposition politics encompassed ideas and practice. Swatantra’s leaders imagined a conservative alternative to a progressive dominant party in a two-party system. They communicated ideas and mobilized people around such issues as inflation, taxation, and property. And they made creative use of India’s institutions to bring checks and balances to the political system.
Democracy’s persistence in India is uncommon among postcolonial societies. Aditya Balasubramanian excavates a perspective of how Indians made and understood their own democracy and economy in a postcolonial society where the democratic form has been unusually persistent.
Aditya Balasubramanian is Senior Lecturer in History at the Australian National University.