Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay stands among very few freedom fighters who imagined 'Freedom' in transnational terms meaning to end exploitation everywhere and of every form. She espoused an expansive idea that will contribute to individual as well as collective growth and evolution. Very few Indians could match her in terms of her travels to countries across the world (England, Germany, Denmark, China, Japan, United States, Srilanka, etc), the relations she forged with leaders worldwide and the multiple fields she straddled in(nationalist politics, socialist politics, women’s movement, education, refugee rehabilitation, theatre, cinema, renewal of handicrafts).

In this episode, I am in conversation with Nico Slate to talk about his recent biography ‘Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay: The Art of Freedom’.

Nico Slate is a Professor of History and Head of the Department of History at Carnegie Mellow University. His research focuses on democracy and social movements in the United States and India. He is the author of six books: The Art of Freedom: Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and the Making of Modern India (HarperCollins India and the University of Pittsburgh Press, 2024); Brothers: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Race (Temple University Press, 2023); Lord Cornwallis Is Dead: The Struggle for Democracy in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2019); Gandhi’s Search for the Perfect Diet: Eating with the World in Mind (University of Washington Press, 2019); The Prism of Race: W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Paul Robeson and the Colored World of Cedric Dover (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014); and Colored Cosmopolitanism: The Shared Struggle for Freedom in the United States and India (Harvard University Press, 2012).

In this episode, I am in conversation with Rahul De, to discuss the key ideas in his book ‘A History of Economic Policy in India: Crisis, Coalitions and Contingency’. Rahul takes us through the meaning of economic history and the need for studying it. He situates industrial development in colonial India and its integration with the global economy. Rahul meticulously and candidly explores the failure of the Indian variant of planning, the reality of the green revolution and changes in voting behaviour, the evolution of liberalisation, and defining what can make a coalition government successful. Don’s miss this episode.

References:

1. Rahul De: A History of Economic Policy in India: Crisis, Coalitions, and Contingency
2. Empire: How Colonial India Made Modern Britain by Aditya Mukherjee
3. Planning Democracy: Modern India’s Quest for Development by Nikhil Menon
4. India’s Political Economy 1947-2004: The Gradual Revolution by Francine R. Frankel
5. Technological Change and Political Turnover: The Democratizing Effects of the Green Revolution in India by Aditya Dasgupta
6. The Basic Approach by Jawaharlal Nehru
7. India’s Political Economy 1947-2004 by Francine R. Frankel
8. Industry and Empire: The Birth of the Industrial Revolution by Eric Hobsbawm
9. The Bombay Plan: Blueprint for Economic Resurgence (Edited by Sanjay Baru and Meghnad Desai)
10. Tirthankar Roy Website