Subalternity, State-Formation and Movements against Hydropower Projects in India, 1920-2004

Abstract

In this thesis I compare the social history of movements against hydropower projects in two states of India, Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, from 1921 to 2004 in three phases. The specific aim of this project is to demonstrate the shifting notion of subaltern political subjectivity and `state-formation? in postcolonial India. Here I argue that the subalterns played significant causal and constitutive roles in transforming the structure of postcolonial Indian state in a more democratic direction and in that process considerably changed their political discourses, practices and strategies. The two extended historical cases of movement against large dams illustrated in this thesis mark the different types of subaltern politics that emerged in postcolonial India.