Postcolonial Moment in South and Southeast Asia

Gyan Prakash is Dayton-Stockton Professor of History at Princeton University, USA. He is the author of Bonded Histories: Genealogies of Labor Servitude in Colonial India (1990), Another Reason: Science and the Imagination of Modern India (1999) and Mumbai Fables (2010). Michael Laffan is Professor of History at Princeton University, USA. He the author of Islamic Nationhood and Colonial Indonesia: The Umma Below the Winds (2003) and The Makings of Indonesian Islam: Orientalism and the Narration of a Sufi Past (2011), and the editor of Belonging Across the Bay of Bengal: Religious Rites, Colonial Migrations, National Rights (2017). Nikhil Menon is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, USA.

[A] welcome addition to the emerging scholarship on history of the postcolonial period. Therefore, I strongly recommend this as essential reading for young scholars, students, and anyone interested in understanding the current political and social climate of the new South and Southeast Asian nation states that emerged in the middle of the twentieth century.

• IntroductionFragility1. "False Truth": Decolonization, Disillusionment and Hope in the 1950s - Rotem Halperin Geva (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel)2. The Enemy Within: Communism and the new Pakistani State - Kamran Asdar Ali (University of Texas, USA)3. Contested Meanings of Post-colonialism and Independence in Burma - Mandy Sadan (School of Oriental and African Studies, UK)4. The Marginal State: Practicing Islamic Statehood in Independent Indonesia - Chiara Formichi (Cornell University, USA)Mobility and Turmoil5. Taming of the Custodian: Evacuee Property Law and Economic Life in the Indian Republic - Rohit De (Yale University, USA)6. Struggles for Citizenship around the Bay of Bengal - Sunil Amrith (Harvard University, USA)7. Genealogies of Return: Postwar, Tamil Culture and the Bay of Bengal - Bhavani Raman (University of Toronto, Canada)Anxiety and Agency 8. Anxious Constitution-Making - Gyan Prakash (Princeton University, USA)9. Forging India's Democratic Citizenship: The Making of Universal Franchise in the Postcolonial Moment - Ornit Shani (University of Haifa, Israel)10. 'Towards Mass Education or a "Natural Aristocracy of Talents"?': Manpower Needs and the Virtues of 'Non-Alignment' - Neeti Nair (University of Virginia, USA)Pedagogy11. 'The Work of Independence': Land Reform and the Ethical Imagination in Postcolonial India - Benjamin Siegel (Boston University, USA)12. 'Help the Plan - Help Yourself': Making India Plan-Conscious - Nikhil Menon (University of Notre Dame, USA)13. The Past and Future of the Muslim Post-Colonial Moment: Islamic Economy and Social Justice in South Asia - Julia Stephens (Rutgers University, USA)14. Straight from Mecca: Medan, Hamka and the Coming of Islam to Indonesia - Michael Laffan (Princeton University, USA)