• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Princely states and the making of modern India : Internationalism, constitutionalism and the postcolonial moment : Internationalism, constitutionalism and the postcolonial moment
  • Contributor: Bhagavan, Manu
  • Published: SAGE Publications, 2009
  • Published in: The Indian Economic & Social History Review, 46 (2009) 3, Seite 427-456
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1177/001946460904600307
  • ISSN: 0019-4646; 0973-0893
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: This article examines discussions that took place regarding princely states at the moment of transition from colonial to postcolonial India. It argues for a rethinking of Nehru's vision for ‘the integration of states’, locating his intellectual position in his broader concerns with the United Nations and a framework of international rights. For Nehru, the relationship between princely states and independent India existed reciprocally with that between the new postcolonial state and the UN. The purpose of the article, then, is to understand what ‘princely states’ meant to the imagination of India, and, more broadly, the idea of postcoloniality itself.