The Fundamental Rights ResolutionNationalism, Internationalism, and Cosmopolitanism in an Interwar Moment

摘要

This paper responds to the analytical threads offered by Partha Chatterjee’s ‘Nationalism, Internationalism and Cosmopolitanism: Some observations from Indian History’, by focussing closely on the dynamics leading to the passing of the Fundamental Rights resolution by the Indian National Congress at Karachi in 1931. A key moment in anti-colonial thought, the resolution was many things: an uneasy fusion of ideologies to assuage a range of divergent political interests; a manoeuvre to prevent another split of the nationalist movement into radical and moderate factions; a gesture towards performing statehood; and a multi-authored but significant imagining of what an independent India might look like. An ostensibly nationalist document, the resolution – elements of which remain in the statement of rights in the Indian Constitution – demonstrates the influence of leftist internationalism and liberal cosmopolitan concerns in utopian interwar imaginings.