Sandipto Dasgupta will speak on his book, Legalizing the Revolution: India and the Constitution of the Postcolony. Following decolonization, the challenge was to give institutional form to the varied and ambitious ideas of freedom generated by the anticolonial struggles. Through an original and comprehensive account of India’s anticolonial movement and constitution making, Legalizing the Revolution explores the unique promises, challenges, and contradictions of that task. In contrast to the familiar liberal constitutional templates derived from the metropole, the book theorizes the distinctively postcolonial constitution through an innovative synthesis of the history of decolonization and constitutional theory. A contribution to postcolonial political thought, the book excavates the unrealized futures imagined during decolonization. At the same time, through a critical account of the making of the postcolonial constitutional order, it offers keys to understanding the present crisis of that order, including and especially in India.

Sandipto Dasgupta is Assistant Professor of Politics at the New School for Social Research, and a member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton. He is a political theorist working on empire, decolonization, and postcolonial presents.