Institute of Commonwealth Studies

Though some of the material here does date back to the latter period of British rule, the majority is from the 1950s-1980s and is concerned with the India that emerged from independence and partition . The ramifications of the circumstances in which the new republic was born are present in much of the party literature here, in terms of the relationship with Pakistan, the struggle between secular and non-secular ideas of the state and the attempt to maintain a position of non-alignment during the Cold War. Other recurring themes are the issues of the dominant role of the Congress Party (with all the subsequent implications for Indian democracy that this entailed), and the seemingly intractable problem of widespread poverty. Also of interest are the materials dealing with the communist parties, with much early debate centring on the contradictions of theoretically anti-parliamentary organisations operating in the democratic sphere - brought to the fore in Kerala with the formation of the first elected communist ministry in the world in 1959 - and later arguments dealing with the repositioning of these still powerful parties given the collapse of the Soviet Bloc.