Army and Nation: How India’s Founders Made its Army Safe for Democracy

Speaker: Prof. Steven I. Wilkinson, Nilekani Professor of India and South Asian Studies, Chair, Department of Political Science, Yale University and author of the forthcoming book Army and Nation – The Military and Indian Democracy  Since Independence (Permanent Black, 2015)

 

Chair: Dr. Srinath Raghavan

 

At Indian Independence in 1947, the country’s founders worried that the army India inherited – conservative and dominated by officers and troops drawn disproportionately from a few “martial” groups posed a threat to democracy. Steven Wilkinson draws on uniquely comprehensive data to explore how and why India has succeeded in keeping the military out of politics, when so many other countries have failed