Human Rights in Postcolonial India

This volume looks at human rights in independent India through frameworks comparable to those in other postcolonial nations in the Global South. It examines wide-ranging issues that require immediate attention such as those related to disability, violence, torture, education, LGBT, neoliberalism, and social justice. The essays presented here explore the discourse surrounding human rights, and engage with aspects linked to the functioning of democracy, security and strategic matters, and terrorism, especially post 9/11. They also discuss cases connected with human rights violations in India and underline the need for a transparent approach and a more comprehensive perspective of India’s human rights record.

Part of the series Ethics, Human Rights and Global Political Thought, the volume will be an important resource for academics, policy makers, civil society organisations, lawyers and those concerned with human rights. It will also be useful to scholars and researchers of Indian politics, law and sociology.

Om Prakash Dwivedi is Assistant Professor in English at Shri Ramswaroop Memorial University, Lucknow, India. He has co-authoredRe-Orientalism and Indian Writing in English (2014), and co-edited Indian Writing in English and the Global Literary Market (2014). Dwivedi is also the editor ofTracing the New Indian Diaspora (2014).

V.G. Julie Rajan is Assistant Professor in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at Rutgers University, USA. She has lectured in the Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, as well as on political violence and women's human rights for the Institute for Research in Human Rights at Columbia University, USA. Her research interests include women and militarism, violence against women, terrorism, and human rights. Rajan’s monographs includeWomen Suicide Bombers: Narratives of Violence (2011), and Crisis in Al Qaeda’s Global Jihad: The Islamic State, Takfir, and the Genocide of Muslims(2015). Among her edited collections are Violence and Gender in the Globalized World:The Intimate and the Extimate (2008; 2015) and Myth and Violence in the Contemporary Female Text: New Cassandras(2011). Rajan’s current research concerns genocide, gendercide, and femicide in the territories claimed by The Islamic State globally.