In the hands of a ‘secular state’: Meos in the aftermath of Partition, 1947-49

This article focuses on unpacking the workings of the independent Indian nation-state in the region of Mewat in the aftermath of Partition violence, particularly the state’s rendering of the Meo community there as a minority. This violence has been called a ‘rite of political and territorial passage’ and ‘systemic ethnic cleansing’ by scholars Shail Mayaram and Ian Copland, respectively. Building upon their works, this article focuses on state actors and details their ‘rule of difference’ in the treatment of Meos through the years 1947 to 1949, that is, from their displacement to the conditions of their resettlement. This documentation is done by accessing the hitherto unused files of the Ministry of States, the Ministry of Relief and Rehabilitation, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Prime Minister’s Secretariat at the National Archives, and the post-1947 papers of Jawaharlal Nehru and Pandit Sunder Lal held at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.</div

P. N. Haksar and Indira’s India: A Glimpse of the domestic sphere, 1967–1976

© 2019 Lokniti, Centre For The Study Of Developing Societies. This article presents four episodes from the political period 1969 to 1976 in India, focusing on the views and actions of P. N. Haksar, Principal Secretary and Advisor to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (1967–1973). Unlike the ‘national/international politics’ hitherto under focus from then, that is, the Congress split (1969), birth of Bangladesh (1971) and the JP Movement/Emergency (1974–1975), the aspects under consideration in this article are of subterranean existence. First of these aspects is the provincial reverberations of the Congress split, the case considered here being that of the Bombay Pradesh Congress Committee. Second is the attitude of the Congress Party towards left opposition, the Communist Party of India Marxist (CPI [M]) in West Bengal, as revealed through the anxieties of Governor Shanti Dhavan. The third aspect under consideration is a glimpse of centre–states relations, as shown through New Delhi’s interactions with the EMS Namboodiripad-led and CPI (M)-dominated United Front Government of Kerala. Finally, the article looks at Haksar’s attempts at planning and development for the state of Bihar. Each of these four themes was among the ‘wider range of functions’ that Mrs Gandhi wished to be performed by her Secretariat and to allow us to test how successful each of it was. Each of these provides a context for contemporary issues

The transfer of Jodhpur railways, 1947-48: Denials, delays and divisions

The process of partition between India and Pakistan, that is, dividing up material assets, remains an under-written subject, barring its border-building aspects. While the old scholarship offered an adversarial account of this exercise, the recent attempts revise this narrative by stressing upon the cooperation evinced by the two sides. Where the former found antagonism, the latter has sought to locate some mutually agreed method in the madness. Focusing on Jodhpur, a princely state, which has not found a place in this matrix, this paper brings together a slice of history from the integration of the princely states with the history of partition, a connection not usually made. Delineating a facet of early interdominion relations on the division of asset of a princely state, it questions the "two peas in a pod" seeking-consensus approach to early India-Pakistan relations that puts two unequal entities together on an equal plane

Mountbatten, Auchinleck and the end of British Indian Army: August-November 1947

Juxtaposing the private papers of Louis Mountbatten and Claude Auchinleck, this article seeks to illuminate the crux at the centre of the reconstitution of the British Indian army into Indian and Pakistani armies, namely, their worsening relationship between April and November 1947, in view of what they saw as each other’s partisan position and its consequences, the closure of Auchinleck’s office and his departure from India. In doing so in considerable detail, it brings to fore yet another aspect of that fraught period of transition at the end of which the British Indian Empire was transformed into the dominions of India and Pakistan and showcases the peculiar predilections in which the British found themselves during the process of transfer of power

Caste politics in Bihar: In historical continuum

This article provides a long-term narrative of movements for social change in Bihar, precipitated by the steady rise to political power by the Backward Classes/Castes in the state, since 1989. Locating this moment in a longer momentum of struggle since the 1920s, it probes the antecedents of recent social change in Bihar politics. Contextualising this process within a long recessional, it traces a larger democratic cycle of empowerment going back to the early twentieth century. The article attempts the historicisation of Bihar politics by drawing upon a variety of sources—from official records to newspapers—and supplementing them with relevant secondary literature

Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah of Kashmir, 1965–1975: From externment to enthronement

© 2018 Lokniti, Centre For The Study Of Developing Societies. Ousted as Premier, Jammu and Kashmir, in August 1953 and anointed as Chief Minister in February 1975, the so-called ‘Lion of Kashmir’ Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was imprisoned, in between these years, ultimately on charges of treason, with brief intermissions. Much has been written about the politics of Kashmir dispute, less so about the Sheikh and his personal troubles especially after the death of his friend Jawaharlal Nehru in May 1964. This somewhat overshadowed decade of his life, in comparison with his hey-days of 1947–1953, shows the kind of settlement in Kashmir that the government of Indira Gandhi was willing to consider. More interestingly, it shows how Sheikh Abdullah was willing to agree to it and provides the context in which he moved from being in a conflictual relationship with New Delhi to becoming, once again, a collaborator in Srinagar in 1975, thereby showcasing the limits of Abdullah’s politics and popularity

Hydrodynamic and Advection-Dispersion Simulation of Cool Seawater Discharges from an LNG Facility

7-14The impact of cool seawater discharge in the coastal waters from a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) plant has been simulated using MIKE21. In this work, hydrodynamics conditions of the coastal waters were calibrated and corroborated to predict the cool seawater discharge under two plant design scenarios by selecting flow rate 15 m3/s and 10 m3/s with a temperature drop of 5 °C and 7 °C, respectively. The simulations were carried out under different scenarios, to arrive at the best possible case to minimize the potential impact on the coastal environment. Both the simulated scenarios complied with the available World Bank guidelines for LNG facilities. However, the designed scenario of flow rate 10 m3/s with a temperature drop of 7 °C between inlet and outlet presents a better choice as it reduces the pumping power of seawater intake. As there are no Indian guidelines for cool seawater discharges from LNG plant, the present work can support the policymakers and regulators to formulate coherent discharge standards

Influence of laser spot size at diffuser plane on the longitudinal spatial coherence function of optical coherence microscopy system

Coherence properties and wavelength of light sources are indispensable for optical coherence microscopy/tomography as they greatly influence the signal to noise ratio, axial resolution, and penetration depth of the system. In the present letter, we investigated the longitudinal spatial coherence properties of the pseudo-thermal light source (PTS) as a function of spot size at the diffuser plane, which is controlled by translating microscope objective lens towards or away from the diffuser plane. The axial resolution of PTS is found to be maximum ~ 13 microns for the beam spot size of 3.5 mm at the diffuser plane. The change in the axial resolution of the system as the spot size is increased at the diffuser plane is further confirmed by performing experiments on standard gauge blocks of height difference of 15 microns. Thus, by appropriately choosing the beam spot size at the diffuser plane, any monochromatic laser light source depending on the biological window can be utilized to obtain high axial-resolution with large penetration depth and speckle-free tomographic images of multilayered biological specimens irrespective of the source temporal coherence length. In addition, PTS could be an attractive alternative light source for achieving high axial-resolution without needing chromatic aberration corrected optics and dispersion-compensation mechanism, unlike conventional setups.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1810.0199