Situated within the context of seismic global transformations of the early twentieth century—namely the two World Wars and the crisis of the imperial order—Provincial Democracy delves into the period between the decline of empire and the rise of the nation. This period, the book contends, is defined by not only the dominance of the nation state and debates over a new global order, but also the expansion of democratic participation in defining and negotiating political futures and an increased use of the language of liberalism, political rights, and self-government in colonial India. Moreover, it shifts the focus from the dominant narrative of linguistic nationalism as defining regionalism on to debates over questions of representation, rights, political reforms, and federalism. Thus, it uncovers a broad perspective on political imaginaries that anticipated democracy in independent India.

‘In this superb study, Rama Mantena completely rethinks the place of provincial politics in relation to anti-colonial thought and federated futures in the twentieth century. At the height of anti-colonial nationalist mobilization in British India, a number of collectivities demanded self-determination, federations, and civil liberties by circulating political visions that competed with discourses of Indian nationalist self-determination. Drawing out a Telugu language of politics in the idiom of provincial autonomy, rather a cultural politics of Telugu language, Mantena places its democratic lineaments in relation to global anti-colonial and internationalist thought in startlingly new ways. Provincial Democracy unearths a political genealogy of the Indian Union that has been obfuscated by ideas of Indian nationalism. It provides an inspiring model for writing and recognizing lost histories of anti-colonial political futures that are ever present.'

Bhavani Raman - Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Toronto

‘Innovative and richly textured, Provincial Democracy demonstrates how shifting the scale of anti-colonial politics to the princely state and province in India challenges insular histories of nationalism that focus on the creation of nation identities and borders. Recovering how anti-colonial imaginaries and vernacular publics cultivated new democratic futures through federalism, local government, civil liberties, minority rights and modernity, it is critical reading for our times.'

Rohit De - Associate Professor, Department of History, Yale University