India at the United Nations: a postcolonial nation-state on the global stage, 1945-1955

Laut, Julianne Rose

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/90545 Copy

Description

Title

India at the United Nations: a postcolonial nation-state on the global stage, 1945-1955

Author(s)

Laut, Julianne Rose

Issue Date

2016-04-15

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Burton, Anoinette

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Burton, Anoinette

Committee Member(s)

• Hoganson, Kristin
• Bhattcharya Mehta, Rini
• Sinha, Mrinalini

Department of Study

History

Discipline

History

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• India
• United Nations
• gender
• Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
• postcolonial
• diplomacy
• race
• UN Conference on International Organization (UNCIO)
• Custodian Force (India)
• peacekeeping
• Hyderabad
• Partition
• masculinity
• Cold War

Abstract

Prior to Indian independence, the Indian National Congress made savvy use of the United Nations as a global stage upon which to establish a sense of inevitability around postcolonial Congress leadership despite the uncertainty of post-independence power sharing in New Delhi. The aspirational postcolonial state staked its claim to moral leadership through anticolonial propaganda, the prominent UN delegate Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit's self-representation of modern Indian womanhood, and highly gendered emotional discourses over the issue of racial oppression. Once faced with the realpolitik of a fragmented and bloody independence, however, nationalist idealism had to be balanced against the pragmatics of state building. The Indian state, focused on the consolidation of power at home and maintaining legitimacy in the international arena, at times placed domestic concerns above the ideals of the United Nations, becoming complicit in the reinforcement of the nation-state system. The extent of the postcolonial state’s affiliation with inherited imperialist aggression was minimized through evasive diplomatic maneuvers and the suppression of information. And as Cold War ideologies clashed at the UN after the Korean War broke out, Pandit and India became caught up in the masculine competition between nation-states. This evolving relationship between the postcolonial Indian state and the emergent United Nations produced the foundations of UN postcolonialism – a gendered cultural construct that emerged in the early years of the UN through both the emotional high of the postcolonial moment and the contradictions of decolonization at the start of the Cold War. This cultural approach argues for a shift away from the more mechanistic organizational histories of the United Nations that fail to consider fully how and where power is produced.

Graduation Semester

2016-05

Type of Resource

text

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Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2016 Julie Laut

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