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A New Hope: India, the United Nations and the Making of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2008

MANU BHAGAVAN
MANU BHAGAVAN*
Affiliation:
Department of History, Hunter College – The City University of New York, 695 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10065, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This paper explores India's role in the development and design of the United Nations (UN), refracted through the Commission that drafted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Through an analysis of sovereignty, citizenship, nationality and human rights from the 1940s to 1956, the paper discusses what India hoped the UN to be, and more generally what they intended for the new world order and for themselves. The paper challenges existing interpretations of international affairs in this period. It seeks to reform our understanding of Jawaharlal Nehru's intellectual vision, and in the process attempts to recast the very concept of post-coloniality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Modern Asian Studies , Volume 44 , Issue 2 , March 2010 , pp. 311 - 347
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

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References

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Institute of Pacific Relations. Security in the Pacific. New York, 1945.Google Scholar
Madhavan, S.K., ed. India at the United Nations, Volume I. New Delhi: APH Publishing Corp., 1999.Google Scholar
Mehta, Hansa, Kaur, Rajkumari Amrit, and Menon, Lakshmi. The Indian Woman's Charter of Rights and Duties, July 1946.Google Scholar
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Papers of the United Nations. UN Archives, New York (UNA).Google Scholar
Private Papers of Hansa Mehta, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library (NMML), New Delhi.Google Scholar
Private Papers of Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit. NMML.Google Scholar
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Chatterjee, Partha. ‘The Moment of Arrival: Nehru and the Passive Revolution’. In Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004, 1st pub. 1986, pp. 131–166.Google Scholar
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Glendon, Mary Ann. A World Made New. New York: Random House, 2002, 1st pub. 2001.Google Scholar
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Guha, Ramachandra. India After Gandhi. New York: Ecco/HarperCollins, 2007.Google Scholar
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Sherwood, Marika. “India at the Founding of the United Nations.” International Studies 33 (4), 1996, 407–428.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Tharoor, Shashi. Nehru: The Invention of India. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2003.Google Scholar
Von Eschen, Penny. Race Against Empire: Black Americans and Anticolonialism, 1937–1957. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997.Google Scholar
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http://www.betterworld.net/quotes/law-quotes.htm. Last accessed 5 October 2006.Google Scholar
http://indiacode.nic.in/coiweb/welcome.html. Last accessed 14 July 2006.Google Scholar
http://www.liberation.org.za/collections/sacp/dadoo/dadoo03.php. Last accessed 22 June 2006.Google Scholar
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http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/wwii/atlantic.htm. Last accessed 29 April 2008.Google Scholar