India in the Interim

This book looks at the governmental interregnum from August 1947 to the start of the first general election in October 1951 and is a narrative of some of its intermediate moments in light of contemporary politics. It is a multi-track chronicle which draws attention to its discrete if not determining impact on the following decade of consolidation. While it is also a map of the prime minister''''s words and actions drawn as it is mainly from his papers it is embedded in the government. It describes a time of transitional governance in independent India''''s early political history and gives a glimpse of its multiple individual traits identity tensions and institutional trends. The Nehruvian gaze traced here shows what a constant flux governing in those unsettled post-partition years was.