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This article examines two simultaneous dynamics in contemporary India: the development of new urban spaces, and an intensification of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva). Examining the case of Noida (a township adjacent to Delhi), this article suggests that the entrepreneurial mode of urban development [Harvey 2006. Spaces of Global Capitalism. New York: Verso] has restructured local spaces, which in turn may give rise to rival attempts at group making, seeking to recreate exclusive identities out of choice and resentment to mobilise political action. Such rival attempts may enable Hindutva to entrench itself in local milieus through multiple modes, including the soft mode of 'neo-Hindutva'. Overall, the article outlines the dynamic association between new urban processes and exclusivist/nativist forms of politics in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article locates the Government of India's refusal to grant refugee status to Afghans in Delhi in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979 within the Cold War politics of the era. I trace this history through internal communications of the Ministry of External Affairs of the Government of India from 1979 to 1983. I argue that the Indian government's response to Afghan arrivals was shaped by geopolitical and diplomatic contingencies rather than humanitarian ones. I also examine the intertwined history of Afghan refugees and the establishment of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees' office in Delhi, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India, as a developing nation, is consistently progressing in the education field. While Indian higher education has expanded tremendously in terms of enrolment, the country has failed to produce an adequate number of world-class universities. Researchers have analysed challenges like demand-supply gap, lack of quality research and innovation, inadequate infrastructure, shortage of quality faculty, etc. Worldwide higher education policies have been transformed by various internationalisation processes that operate in a constant flux of globalisation. Given the projected demand for massification and quality improvements needed, internationalisation of higher education has become an important national goal in India. This paper conceptualises the importance of foreign partnerships in the Indian higher education sector. It delineates major challenges for the foreign enterprises to enter the Indian higher education market and highlights some recent developments on policy initiatives and schemes initiated by the Indian government to bring higher education at par with international standards. Specific hindrances of foreign partnerships in the higher education sector have also been discussed. In conclusion, this paper critically argues for formulating useful regulatory guidelines for foreign partnerships by fostering research on understanding the policy and management of the Indian higher education system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M. N. Srinivas's The remembered village bristles with references to photography, from a formal group image of villagers marking Gandhi's death to an account of villagers' enthusiasm for the products of Srinivas's own camera. We learn, among other things, that Srinivas became known as the "chamara man," that he photographed the castration of bulls, that some of his photographs were almost involved in a court case, and that a Dalit worker resisted the ethnographer's camera because the police used photographs to trace runaway servants. This article examines his recounting of the role of the camera in Rampura, and the relationship of photography to memory, evidence, and politics, before moving to a very different village in central India whose recent and current fixation with the camera, and what it makes visible and permanent, is explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beginning November 2020, over two hundred thousand farmers have gathered in a prolonged sit-in on the borders of New Delhi. The immediate impetus for the protests was the passage of three laws that ease the entry of agribusiness into the agricultural sector. The farmers' protests began eight months after mass protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, enacted in December 2019. This amendment to India's Citizenship Act disbars Muslims from neighboring countries from seeking citizenship on the grounds of religious persecution. In this essay I explore some themes as they resonate across these two movements as they relate to a fundamental crisis of postcolonial nationhood. I argue that these protests have interrupted Hindu nationalism's narrative by forging a new kind of caring crowd in which embodied acts of care create an ethical vision of citizenship. Popular politics materialized in these movements may be viewed as ongoing plebiscites on the neoliberal consensus in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rio Tinto had been developing a diamond mining project in Madhya Pradesh for a decade when in 2017 it hastily abandoned the project. We analyse this counterintuitive exit through an ethnographic approach nested within a qualitative case study framework. We argue that the exit was caused by multi-scalar politics. Local protests over livelihood and labour issues –pre-emptively rearticulated by regional civil society groups through an ecological 'framing' – led to litigation. The national forest bureaucracy posed regulatory hurdles, and a change in the national political regime in 2014 brought to power a party that leveraged national capital of a certain variety, which weakened Rio Tinto's political position. Lastly, a slump in the global diamond market created economic uncertainties, finally leading to its exit. It has not, however, deterred the government from facilitating investment by Indian mega-corporate houses in mining diamonds, once again ignoring local dissent. Under the current regime in India, the space for activism is increasingly restricted, and that restriction, we contend, can lead to the disarray in strategising alliances and goals between ecological and social justice concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the emergency COVID-19 governance in India. Topics discussed include the consolidation of Hindu nationalist power under Prime Minister Narendra Modi; the articulation of nationalism with public health policing; invoking Hindu tradition as the basis of a triumphant developmentalism for the new India; and the centrality of masking, policing, and ultimately biomedicine to an emergent discourse on India's development as a worldwide biomedical leader.

Colonial and postcolonial historians writing in English relied upon an emancipated slave's eighteenth-century Persian text, Tahmās Nāma, to construct the history of the Punjab in the same period. In this process, they have mistranslated the text and the genre. Rather than reading Tahmās Nāma as factual history or as a moral text of refinement, this article argues that if we return to the original account, in Persian, we see that the text is primarily auto/biographical. While this auto/biography does provide some insight into eighteenth-century political history of the Punjab and Mughal Hindustan, it—more importantly—sheds light on the ethnic, religious, social, economic and gendered lives of the author, Miskin, and the people whom he includes in his narrative. These intersecting and overlapping identities have been erased, flattened or misrepresented in translations of the text. Based on a re-reading of the auto/biography in its original language, this article considers how identity and slavery—conceptual categories of the present that are elided in the mistranslations—function in the text, and how those categories were understood, negotiated and leveraged during the eighteenth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does liberal democracy require a strict separation between state and religion? In Anglophone liberal political theory, the separationist model of the First Amendment of the US Constitution has provided the basic template for the rightful relationship between state and religion. Yet this model is ill-suited to the evaluation of the secular achievements of most states, including India. This article sets out a new framework, minimal secularism, as a transnational framework of normative comparison. Minimal secularism does not single out religion as special, and it appeals to abstract liberal democratic ideals such as equal inclusion and personal liberty. Actual debates about secularism in India are shown to revolve around these ideals. The study of recent Indian controversies—about the Uniform Civil Code, the status of Muslims, and the rise of BJP nationalism—also sheds light on some blind spots of Western secularism and the conception of sovereignty and religion it relies on. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In his 1936 essay "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction", Walter Benjamin establishes that it is the 'aestheticization of politics' or 'politicization of art' which streamlines the cultural discourse of a nation at a given moment. The present paper attempts to critically analyze the 'politics of visuality' vis-à-vis 'visuality of politics' as an elemental framework in the making of Indian national discourse. To understand or rationalize this elemental framework, the paper postulates its hypothesis, that the politicization of art is a valid inquiry into how a certain ideological discourse is pre-selected and pre-programmed with a certain grid of features and structures of perception. It is this ideological discourse that needs to be exposed through a visual text namely, Vijay Pawar's Bhim Garjana. This visual text broadly represents what Kancha Illaiah terms the Ambedkarite phase of Dalit history spanning over two decades - 1936-1956i. Bhim Garjana is an aesthetic artifact directed by a Dalit himself - an 'insider's'ii document on Ambedkar's life and philosophy. There have so far been three films on Ambedkar including Bhim Garjana, one directed by Jabbar Patel titled Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (2000) and second by Anand Patwardha titled Jai Bhim Comrade (2011). All the visual texts though do not follow the definition of biopic strictly, but more or less, the paper places them in the category of biopics. Each text focuses on the life and struggle, both in historical and ideological terms, of Ambedkar. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Muslims in India have lived alongside Hindus peacefully for many centuries. Yet in the contemporary period some politicians have orchestrated division for political ends, for example, during the Godhra-Gujarat riots in India in 2002 in which there were many Muslim casualties. Critics allege that the ruling party in Gujarat, the Bharatiya Janata Party, and its leader Chief Minister Narendra Modi (now the Prime Minister of India) were responsible for the Godhra-Gujarat riots. Once again, in 2020, under Narendra Modi's Prime Ministership, riots against the Muslims took place in Delhi. Within the framework of identity politics in India, where religion seems to dominate the social, economic and political spheres, based on my participants interviews, this paper mainly focuses on how the 2002 Gujarat riots impacted on Muslims in Gujarat. Based on other primary sources, this paper also briefly examines the recent 2020 Delhi riots. I conclude that, in the era of identity politics when Muslims form a disadvantaged minority, national and international policy makers should promulgate policies that would improve social cohesion in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

2018 was plagued by social media related lynchings in India. The Indian government's response was to blame the WhatsApp messaging service for the violence and formally demand a technological fix. This research draws upon theories of racial and caste divides within India and combines them with the concepts of techno-determinism and theories of public to reach conclusions about the WhatsApp case. Specifically, it becomes clear through analysis of case studies (of specific lynchings, social media messages, and the governmental response) that WhatsApp was scapegoated to allow a solution that cost least in terms of the economics of governance and enabled socio-historical divides to go unchallenged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) – the paramilitary corps that animates the contemporary Indian Hindu nationalist movement – increasingly relies on its Muslim wing to bolster its denials of extremism. The RSS claims hold that crowds of Muslims join its Muslim wing, the Muslim Rashtriya Manch, through organic nationalist awakenings that imply tacit acceptance of the RSS' Hindu nationalist agenda. Based on a year of interview-based research in North and West India with more than 80 Manch members, defectors, critics and leaders, I provide empirical evidence that challenges the claim that the RSS is winning over Muslim minds. Instead, I suggest that Muslims join for largely instrumental reasons; for material reward and security, but also to rebuke traditional Muslim centres of power and to draw close to the charismatic leadership of Manch leader Indresh Kumar. While discussions of motivations are famously fraught, I rely on interviews not to conclusively list membership motivations, but to assess the claims made by the RSS. As Hindu nationalists consolidate and intensify their activities after the 2019 general election, understanding how the RSS does or does not 'win over' India's Muslim communities is necessary groundwork to address the position of minorities in a Hindu nationalist future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In India, issues related to environmental governance have not been aligned to the military's objectives except in a few cases. Since environmental change has not been recognised as a critical 'security' issue yet in India, there is a reluctance on the part of the security establishment, including the military, to deal with it on an urgent basis. The question of why the armed forces should be trained to undertake environmental activities when their primary duty is to defend the country against external aggression assumes significance as it is largely believed that if they are trained for the former, their primary functions could suffer and territorial integrity of the nation could be threatened. Other impediments to institutionalisation include the complex relations between the civil and military establishments; constitutional and legal status of the Indian armed forces that is not uniformly enshrined or recognised; and their societal status that still comes under constant scrutiny, leading to a wedge between the military and civilian domains. In this context, the article attempts to identify the doctrinal and policy dimensions of the Indian military's role in environmental affairs as well as the factors that influence formal institutionalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

India's largest SEZ – an Amoebal Zone – has constantly changed shape, name, and purpose. The material, regulatory, cartographic, and classificatory flexibility of 'unfixed land' underlies these contortions. The multiplicity of land also informs political adversariality towards the Zone. Over 2.5 decades, a heterogeneous group of farmers, fishworkers, pastoralists, and local to global NGOs have contested the takeover of lands along registers of access, use, property, environmental sustainability, and more. This multiplicity is somewhat ordered through the coercions, mediations, and compromises of everyday and Party politics. Politics temporarily and imperfectly settles the making, distribution and use of unfixed land. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Assam Rifles, the oldest paramilitary group in India, was formed as a defensive force to protect tea estates from tribal raiding. Following independence, the Indian government reversed British policy in the North-East frontier to extend administrative control over tribal areas that were largely neglected under colonial rule. In aid of this policy change, the government shifted the role of the Assam Rifles to an offensive counterinsurgency force. Based on primary sources, this analysis helps to demonstrate how post-colonial states co-opt colonial institutions to reflect new policies and the use of coercive force by paramilitary groups in the state-making process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Faced with unresponsive and intimidating state institutions, citizens often need to rely on brokers to obtain state benefits. This article compares the ways in which brokers help people gain access to public services in two Indian states. Using ethnographic fieldwork in both states, we compare Bihar and Gujarat to argue that the evolution of the informal networks through which citizens gain access to public services constitutes an important dimension of democratisation processes. In both Gujarat and Bihar such brokerage networks have fragmented considerably over the last 40 years, while also becoming less marked by social hierarchies. This change has taken place despite a differing role and strength of political parties in the two states. The fragmentation and levelling of brokerage networks have enabled citizens to put more pressure on state institutions and power holders. This process of "informal democratisation" suggests that the comparative study of brokerage networks constitutes a promising and largely unexplored avenue to interpret the challenges facing governance and local democracy in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The informal sector and informal employment relations occupy a prominent place in India's economy: one of their key features is the apparent absence of the state from labour regulation. This article seeks to trace the emergence of the division between the formal and informal sectors in India's economy from a historical perspective: it shows how the state, far from being absent, played a fundamental role in creating the dichotomy. This is done through a close study of labour legislation and the politics around it, taking South India as a case study. The article examines the enactment of four laws in Madras province in the late 1940s, ostensibly aimed at protecting workers, and their subsequent implementation by the Madras government. It shows how these laws ended by excluding workers from small unorganized industries (such as beedi-making, arecanut-processing, handloom-weaving, and tanning) from legal protection. It explores the ramifications of this exclusion and argues that the reinforcement of the formal–informal divide was the outcome of a complex political struggle between employers, workers' unions, and the state during this formative period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the late 1940s in India should no longer be reduced to the twin events of partition and independence. A generalized political crisis unsettled, for a brief period, the structures of social and economic power, and not just intercommunity relations and the constitution of the state. These years were thus, among other things, a catalytic moment for the definition of 'labour' as both a political category and a parameter of post-colonial politics: processes dating back to the First World War, at least, were consolidated, under pressure from this crisis, into a new labour regime that has withstood political pressure for almost seven decades. The article offers an analysis of the almost-forgotten post-war strike movement, which was nevertheless unprecedented in its social and geographical spread. The movement elicited both repressive and reformist responses: the extraordinary level of emergency powers applied to suppress it are, therefore, as much examined as the series of momentous legislative and institutional changes of the late 1940s. In conclusion, the long-term consequences of this cycle of strike–reform–repression for India's post-colonial labour regime are adumbrated. A strongly etatist, potentially authoritarian, regime of industrial relations, it is argued, was checked by an enduring political trade union pluralism. At the same time, divisions within India's working classes were deepened and consolidated as labour law and social legislation sealed off the comparatively small 'core workforces' of public sector and large-scale industrial enterprises from the majority of workers in what would soon be called the 'informal economy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Indian nationalists considered the Khilafat Movement of 1919–1924 in India as an anti-colonial movement by the Indian Muslims. Most studies on the Khilafat movement perceive it as a pan-Islamic supranational phenomenon against the British hostility toward the Sultan of Turkey. This movement provided a platform for Indian Muslim leaders, such as Abul Kalam Azad, who represented Muslim politics in post-independence India. This paper aims to unravel the trajectory of the Khilafat Movement in India and its unity with the Indian Non-Cooperation Movement. Moreover, this paper examines the effect of this confluence that prompted change in the political ideology of Abul Kalam Azad, thereby influencing his path toward becoming a national leader in Hindu majority India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this piece, we argue that the electoral performance of the BJP, and the popularity of Narendra Modi, has significantly altered the dynamic of regional party politics in India. The BJP's undiluted power at the Centre has created the political context for greater centralization of power. This in turn has generated greater distinctions between regional and national politics. The popularity of Prime Minister Modi combined with his party's ideological project generates a deeply centralized national politics that can be easily distinguished from regional politics for the voter. This increasingly distinct form of national politics weakens the role of regional parties in national politics, both in electoral terms and in bargaining power, as regional parties rarely have well-defined, credible national policy platforms in India. However, it does, for the moment, appear to strengthen the electoral position of regional parties at the state level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on women and child trafficking from Nepal in India, and prevention efforts. Topics include the need of coordination between governments and nongovernment agencies; and consideration to fund and support nongovernment agencies in India and Nepal to prevent human rights abuse.

Exploring the intersection of state, religion, and ethnicity, this article considers the opportunities for individual and collective advancement available to Muslim Gujjars in Chamba district of Himachal Pradesh. Following the lives of three prominent members of the community—a teacher, a political activist, and a maulvi—it considers their respective orientations to the state and their relationships with their fellow Gujjars, to illustrate the different ways in which Gujjars have sought to transcend their marginal and subordinated position as an ethnic and religious minority. With state-promoted schemes of affirmative action and reservation offering only limited opportunities for social and economic advancement, we see how Gujjars have responded to their continued marginalization, first through political mobilization as an ethnic group and, more recently, through the establishment of Islamic educational institutions and association with Tablighi Jama'at. This leads to an evaluation of the emancipatory potentials and contradictions of insurgent citizenship when mobilized around specific aspects of ethnic and religious identity. Against a backdrop of economic liberalization and accompanying shifts in civil society, I show how the distribution of rewards that derive from strategies of assimilation, engagement, and withdrawal are structured in particular ways, including by class and gender. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

West Bengal, in comparison to other states of India, witnesses large-scale political violence throughout the year which, however, sees an upswing particularly during the time of elections. Nonetheless, apart from a few sporadic mentions, such violence is yet to get scholarly attention. Based on my longitudinal ethnography (2008–2017) in four Gram Panchayats – the lowest to the three-tier local governance system, I show the ways in which political polarization and violence occupy a dominant position in everyday village life of the state. I show that while domains of dominance-subordination and hate speech shape much of the discursive spheres of the state, people, through a variety of formal and informal channels, tend to depend on political party and panchayat. Such politico-economic dependence, development of hooligan dominated political control, and continuation of violence through direct and subtler means are some of the major roots of violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do politicians learn what their voters want? This article explores how Indian politicians leverage different types of interlocutors in order to develop coherent perspectives of voter wants to support policy and strategy development. It then uses innovative archival data to demonstrate how access to different types of interlocutors made key political developments possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper examines regulatory mechanisms for combating judicial corruption and misconduct in India. It aims at a critical analysis of the regulatory mechanisms for both subordinate and higher courts. The study, inter alia, concludes that the regulatory mechanisms for subordinate courts lack conceptual clarity, suffer role ambiguity, and are bereft of functional autonomy; the powers and functions of these mechanisms are not clearly prescribed, and the procedures concerning complaints, inquiries and disciplinary actions are ad hoc. The mechanisms for subordinate courts are opaque, inaccessible, slow and ineffective. The paper also argues that the "in-house procedure" in the higher judiciary is inadequate, opaque, informal and judge-centric; it terms the "removal procedure" as rigid and ineffective. This paper recommends structural, organizational and functional reforms to strengthen regulatory mechanisms for the subordinate judiciary. For the higher judiciary, it proposes a constitutional body having adequate representation from a broad spectrum of the population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The performance of obligations under a contract may be hindered by unexpected supervening events, leading to contractual uncertainties. The doctrine of frustration paves the way for a just consequence of such an unfortunate event, which has happened without any fault of the contracting parties. The doctrine fills the void in a contract regarding supervening events, based on principles of fairness and equity. Considering the large implications on the obligatory and binding nature of a valid contract, it becomes important to analyse the factors that guide the courts to determine its application. Unlike common law, the Indian Contract law explicitly incorporates the doctrine of frustration under section 56 of the Contract Act. However, the evolution of this doctrine in India has been greatly influenced by English law. This paper attempts to restate the law on the doctrine of frustration as applicable in India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses political issues associated with the proposed National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in India under the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Topics explored include the citizenship which may be offered to members of non-Muslim minority communities in neighboring regions, the non-violent protest launched by Muslim women against the CAA, and brief details about the NRC policies and process.

The article discusses the transformation of India under the leadership of Hindu nationalist party Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It explored the policy initiatives proposed such as the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), the secular principles of the government led by Modi compared to previous administrations, and the presidential order which revoked the special status of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The article informs that the Parliament of India has passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2019 amending the Citizenship Act, 1955 which provides the grounds for acquiring Indian citizenship.

By now, the world seems to have learned to live with the Corona virus which is likely to cast its spell for some more months. Meanwhile, active and new infection cases have started to decline in many countries, along with a growing momentum in the vaccination drive around the world. Nevertheless, the aftershocks of the pandemic are real. No event since World War II has triggered such distinct global effects on human and state behaviour so rapidly. The pandemic's transformational effects on global affairs are yet to surface fully. While there is no unanimity yet on the ushering in of a new world order, the pandemic's upshot is consequential for the current world order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts to trace the evolution of India's maritime outlook and shows how, over the years, a paradigm shift is evident in India's worldview whereby a continental focus on South Asia has been complemented by a maritime focus. India has come to formally recognise the geo-strategic importance of the Indo-Pacific to its own national security and strategic interests. This is reflected in its naval modernisation efforts as well as in official policy positions and diplomatic manoeuvrings. The paper identifies inclusivity and ASEAN centrality as the main pillars of India's Indo-Pacific approach which, while converging with ASEAN's outlook on the Indo-Pacific, is distinct from the US vision for the region. In assessing India's approach to the QUAD, the paper identifies some tension between India's Indo-Pacific approach and the QUAD. However, it also argues that such tensions have been accommodated, and India's maritime moves have to be seen as an extension of the fundamental principles driving its own foreign policy, i.e. ensuring self-sufficiency and independence. The paper argues that such a position is well suited for the rapidly changing balance of power equations in the region which demand flexible restructuring rather than a formal security "alliance." Moreover, focusing on inclusivity would allow India to allay the fears of smaller South Asian neighbours, such as Sri Lanka, of increasing the securitisation of the region as well as of traditional partners such as Russia who see QUAD as "anti-China." The paper concludes that India's nuanced SAGAR vision is based on an acknowledgment of the unique reality of the dynamic balance of power equations in the region, and reflects its diplomatic exceptionalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We are all aware that India's secured future lies in making her a complete Humane Nation. The primary concern of any Government is to guarantee the Right to Education as a fundamental Right to every child and higher education to every citizen. This enables every Indian to free themselves from the shackles of ignorance responsible for the inequalities in the social fabric. However, the social, cultural and political systems of today are posing serious challenges and violation of human rights is one of the grave issues of today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to decode the ways in which social policy that has essentially developmental and welfare imperatives is being used to pursue an exclusivist‐authoritarian right‐wing agenda in India under Narendra Modi. The authors highlight a contradistinction between the previous United Progressive Alliance regime led by the Congress Party and the current National Democratic Alliance regime led by the BJP to show the shift in the understanding and the role of social policy. In essence, social programmes have been combined with market‐oriented reforms, undoing the entitlements‐based approach to social policies of the previous regime. The authors then go on to discuss a variety of social policy programmes introduced by the Modi government with a focus on public health and sanitation objectives, but also including gender empowerment imperatives, education, training and employment programmes for socially marginalized groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers Ambedkar's ideas about the implementation of democracy in India, in the context of the linguistic reorganization of provincial administrative boundaries. In doing so, it looks to emphasize the importance of territorial configurations to Dalit politics during this period and, in particular, the consequences of 'provincialization', which has received little attention within the existing literature. Rethinking space by redrawing administrative territory provided Ambedkar with one potential avenue through which to escape the strictures of Dalits' minority status. In this vision, linguistic reorganization (and partition) were harbingers of greater democratization and potential palliatives to the threat of Hindu majority rule at the centre. In turn, however, Ambedkar simultaneously came to perceive the creation of these new administrative spaces as marking a new form of provincial majoritarianism, despite his best efforts to form alliances with those making such demands. In this sense, the article also seeks to address some of the shared processes behind linguistic reorganization and partition as two related forms of territorial redrawing. In the face of these demands, and the failures of both commensuration and coalition politics, Ambedkar turned to the idea of separate settlements for Dalits, whereby they might themselves come to constitute a majority. Whilst such a novel attempt at separation and resettlement was not ultimately realized, its emergence within Ambedkar's thought at this time points towards its significance in any history of caste and untouchability in twentieth-century South Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]