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This talk explores the untold story of the preparation of the first draft electoral roll on the basis of universal adult franchise in India. How did the principle and institution of universal franchise attain meaning and enter the political imagination of Indians, a large majority of whom had never voted for a political representative in a legislative assembly, and a vast majority of whom were poor and illiterate?

About the Speaker: Dr Ornit Shani, Head of Asian Studies, University of Haifa

Dr Shani received her PhD from the University of Cambridge. She was a Research Fellow at St. John’s College, Cambridge University. Her current research focuses on the modern history of democracy and citizenship in India.

Her new book is How India Became Democratic: Citizenship and the Making of the Universal Franchise, Cambridge University Press, 2018 (South Asia edition with Penguin Random House). This book uncovers the greatest experiment in democratic history: the creation of the electoral roll and universal adult franchise in India.

Dr Shani holds an Israeli Science Foundation (ISF) grant for her sequel project: ‘Embedding Democracy: the Social History of India’s First Elections’. Her other areas of research are the rise of Hindu Nationalism, identity and caste politics, communal and caste violence. She is the author of Communalism, Caste, and Hindu Nationalism: The Violence in Gujarat, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007.

Fields of interest: Modern South Asia, democracy and democratisation, India’s constitutionalism, India legal history, Indian elections, nationalism, identity politics.