Post-independence India

In short

Post-independence India studies the political, economic, social and foreign-policy history of the Indian republic from 15 August 1947 to the present — partition and integration, constitution-making, planned development, wars, the Emergency, Mandal-Mandir-Market politics of the 1990s, liberalisation and the coalition and post-coalition decades. It explains how a poor, newly partitioned, multilingual society built a working democracy with universal adult franchise from the start, and how its economy moved from a state-led mixed economy to a liberalised one. It is a core paper in BA/MA History (Contemporary India / History of India after 1947) under UGC CBCS and the compulsory General Studies-I and II content for UPSC Civil Services, state PSCs, NET-History and SSC/bank general-awareness rounds. In interviews for teaching, research, policy, journalism, think-tank, PSU and civil-services roles, candidates are asked to explain causes and consequences, not recite dates.

Explained

Partition, integration and constitution-making (1947-1952)

• Independence and Partition (15 August 1947): effected by the Indian Independence Act, 1947 of the British Parliament, on the basis of the 3 June 1947 Mountbatten Plan; the Radcliffe Award divided Punjab and Bengal. Estimates of deaths range widely (commonly cited figures run from several hundred thousand to around a million) and displaced people number roughly 12-18 million — figures are contested, so cite them as estimates.
• Refugee rehabilitation: Ministry of Rehabilitation; townships such as Faridabad and Rajinder Nagar; the Nehru-Liaquat Pact (1950) on minorities; Evacuee Property legislation.
• Integration of princely states: 562-odd states were offered accession through the Instrument of Accession (defence, external affairs, communications) plus a Standstill Agreement, handled by the States Department under Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon.
  • Junagadh — Nawab acceded to Pakistan; a plebiscite in February 1948 went to India.
  • Hyderabad — Nizam resisted; Operation Polo (police action), September 1948.
  • Jammu and Kashmir — acceded on 26 October 1947 after Pakistani tribal invasion; the 1947-48 war ended with a UN-brokered ceasefire (1 January 1949) and the Ceasefire Line, later the Line of Control (Simla, 1972). Article 370 provided special status; it was rendered inoperative and the state reorganised into two Union Territories by the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganisation Act, 2019.
  • Goa, Daman and Diu — Portuguese; taken in December 1961 (Operation Vijay). Puducherry — French; de facto transfer 1954, treaty ratified 1962. Sikkim — protectorate from 1950, became the 22nd state by the 36th Constitutional Amendment, 1975.
• Constituent Assembly: first met 9 December 1946; Rajendra Prasad president; B. R. Ambedkar chaired the Drafting Committee; Objectives Resolution moved by Nehru (1946). Constitution adopted 26 November 1949, in force 26 January 1950.
• First general election (1951-52): conducted by the Election Commission under Sukumar Sen on universal adult franchise (voting age 21; reduced to 18 by the 61st Amendment, 1988). Congress won a large majority; it "dominated" without being authoritarian — Rajni Kothari's "Congress system" of one-party dominance with internal factional competition.

The Nehru era: planning, institutions, foreign policy (1947-1964)

• Mixed economy: Industrial Policy Resolutions of 1948 and 1956 (the latter reserving core industries for the state — Schedules A, B, C) and the Industries (Development and Regulation) Act, 1951 creating industrial licensing, later called the "licence-permit-quota raj".
• Planning Commission (1950, by executive resolution) and National Development Council/NDC; First Five Year Plan (1951-56) on the Harrod-Domar model, agriculture and irrigation-led; Second Plan (1956-61) on the Mahalanobis model, heavy industry — Bhilai (USSR), Rourkela (W. Germany), Durgapur (UK) steel plants; Third Plan (1961-66) derailed by the 1962 and 1965 wars and drought, followed by three Annual Plans ("Plan holiday", 1966-69). The Planning Commission was replaced by NITI Aayog on 1 January 2015; the 12th Plan (2012-17) was the last Five Year Plan.
• Land reforms (a State subject): abolition of zamindari/intermediaries, tenancy reform (security of tenure, fair rent), land ceilings, and consolidation of holdings. Results were uneven — zamindari abolition largely succeeded; ceiling laws were widely evaded through benami transfers. Operation Barga (West Bengal, 1978) and Kerala's reforms are the standard success cases. Bhoodan/Gramdan — Vinoba Bhave's voluntary land-gift movement (from 1951).
• Social legislation: the Hindu Code Bill split into four Acts (1955-56) — Hindu Marriage Act, Hindu Succession Act, Hindu Minority and Guardianship Act, Hindu Adoptions and Maintenance Act; the Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955, later strengthened as the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 and supplemented by the SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.
• Science and institutions: Atomic Energy Commission (1948) and Homi Bhabha's three-stage nuclear programme; AEC/DAE (1954); CSIR laboratories; IITs from Kharagpur (1951); ISRO's predecessor INCOSPAR (1962); IIMs (1961).
• Foreign policy: non-alignment (Bandung 1955; NAM founded at Belgrade, 1961), Panchsheel (1954 Sino-Indian agreement on Tibet), Korean War mediation, decolonisation advocacy.
  • 1962 Sino-Indian war — defeat in NEFA and Aksai Chin after the "Forward Policy" and the McMahon Line dispute; led to defence modernisation and V. K. Krishna Menon's resignation.
  • 1965 Indo-Pak war under Lal Bahadur Shastri — Tashkent Declaration (January 1966).

Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and the Janata interlude (1966-1980)

• Linguistic reorganisation: Andhra created in 1953 after Potti Sriramulu's fast; the States Reorganisation Act, 1956 (Fazl Ali Commission) created 14 states and 6 UTs; Bombay split into Maharashtra and Gujarat (1960); Punjab split into Punjab, Haryana and parts of Himachal (1966); the North-East reorganised from the 1960s-70s (Nagaland 1963; Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura 1972; Arunachal and Mizoram became states in 1987). Telangana became the 29th state in 2014.
• Official language: Hindi in Devanagari as official language (Article 343); the Official Languages Act, 1963 allowed English to continue alongside Hindi, and the anti-Hindi agitation in Madras (1965) led to its 1967 amendment, continuing English as an associate official language indefinitely.
• 1967 elections and coalition beginnings: Congress lost eight states; the first non-Congress and SVD (Samyukta Vidhayak Dal) governments; large-scale defections; the Congress split of 1969 (Congress (R) vs Congress (O)).
• Economic shifts: Green Revolution — HYV wheat and rice from 1966-67 (Norman Borlaug; M. S. Swaminathan), fertiliser, assured irrigation and minimum support prices; institutional support from the Agricultural Prices Commission (1965, now CACP) and the Food Corporation of India (1965). Bank nationalisation (14 banks, 1969; 6 more, 1980); abolition of privy purses (26th Amendment, 1971); Operation Flood and Amul's dairy cooperatives (Verghese Kurien) from 1970.
• 1971 Bangladesh war: refugee influx, Indo-Soviet Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation (August 1971), the December war, creation of Bangladesh, and the Simla Agreement (1972). Pokhran-I "peaceful nuclear explosion", 18 May 1974 — followed by the NSG's formation and technology denial regimes.
• Constitution and courts: the property-rights and land-reform cases — *Shankari Prasad* (1951), *Golak Nath* (1967), Kesavananda Bharati (1973) establishing the basic structure doctrine, *Indira Nehru Gandhi v. Raj Narain* (1975), *Minerva Mills* (1980); the right to property was removed from Fundamental Rights by the 44th Amendment, 1978 (now Article 300A).
• The Emergency (25 June 1975 - 21 March 1977): proclaimed under Article 352 citing "internal disturbance" after the Allahabad High Court set aside Indira Gandhi's election; preceded by the Navnirman and Bihar movements and JP's "Total Revolution". Features — MISA detentions, press censorship, suspension of Fundamental Rights (*ADM Jabalpur*, 1976), the 42nd Amendment, 1976 (added "socialist, secular, integrity" to the Preamble; Fundamental Duties; curbed judicial review), the 20-point programme, forced sterilisation and slum demolitions. The 44th Amendment, 1978 replaced "internal disturbance" with "armed rebellion" and added safeguards.
• Janata Party government (1977-79): first non-Congress government at the Centre; Morarji Desai then Charan Singh; Shah Commission on Emergency excesses; the Mandal Commission (1979, report 1980) on OBCs. It collapsed over the dual-membership issue.

Crisis decade and the turn to the market (1980-2000)

• Regional and insurgency challenges: Punjab militancy, Operation Blue Star (June 1984) and Indira Gandhi's assassination (31 October 1984) followed by the anti-Sikh violence; the Rajiv-Longowal Accord (1985); Assam anti-foreigner agitation and the Assam Accord (1985); the Mizo Accord (1986) ending that insurgency; Kashmir insurgency from 1989-90; the IPKF in Sri Lanka (1987-90) and Rajiv Gandhi's assassination (1991).
• Rajiv Gandhi years (1984-89): telecom and computer liberalisation (C-DOT, Sam Pitroda), technology missions, the 73rd and 74th Amendments (passed 1992, in force 1993) giving constitutional status to Panchayati Raj and municipalities with one-third seats reserved for women — lineage from Balwantrai Mehta (1957) and Ashok Mehta (1978) committees; Bofors scandal; Shah Bano case and the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Divorce) Act, 1986.
• Mandal, Mandir, Market (1989-1992): V. P. Singh's implementation of 27% OBC reservation in central jobs (1990), upheld with conditions in *Indra Sawhney* (1992) which also set the ~50% ceiling and the "creamy layer" test; the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the Rath Yatra and the demolition of the Babri Masjid (6 December 1992); the title dispute was settled by the Supreme Court in 2019.
• 1991 balance-of-payments crisis and reforms: foreign exchange reserves fell to around two weeks of imports, gold was pledged with the Bank of England and the Bank of Japan, and India drew on the IMF. Narasimha Rao and Finance Minister Manmohan Singh carried out LPG — liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation: rupee devaluation (July 1991), New Industrial Policy, 1991 abolishing licensing for all but a short negative list, de-reservation and disinvestment of PSUs, FERA relaxed (replaced by FEMA, 1999), tariff cuts, the Narasimham Committee on banking, SEBI given statutory powers (1992), and WTO membership (1995). Growth rose, poverty fell, but agriculture, employment and regional inequality lagged — the standard critique.
• Coalition era: no single-party majority from 1989 to 2014 except in effect 1991 (a minority government); United Front (1996-98) with a Common Minimum Programme; the Anti-Defection Law (52nd Amendment, 1985, Tenth Schedule; tightened by the 91st Amendment, 2003, which also capped the Council of Ministers at 15% of the House). Pokhran-II, 11 and 13 May 1998; the Kargil conflict, May-July 1999; the Lahore Declaration (1999).

Contemporary India (2000-present)

• Rights-based legislation: Right to Information Act, 2005; MGNREGA, 2005 (100 days of guaranteed wage employment; replaced from 1 July 2026 by the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025, with 125 days); Forest Rights Act, 2006; Right to Education — 86th Amendment, 2002, Article 21A, and the RTE Act, 2009; National Food Security Act, 2013; Land Acquisition (RFCTLARR) Act, 2013 replacing the 1894 Act.
• Economic and institutional change: VAT from 2005 and GST from 1 July 2017 (101st Amendment) — slabs restructured to 5%, 18% and 40% from 22 September 2025; Aadhaar and the UIDAI (Aadhaar Act, 2016, read with *Puttaswamy*, 2017, which held privacy a fundamental right); demonetisation of ₹500 and ₹1,000 notes on 8 November 2016; the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016; inflation-targeting through the Monetary Policy Committee (RBI Act amendment, 2016); the Income-tax Act, 2025 replacing the Income-tax Act, 1961 from 1 April 2026; the four Labour Codes in force from 21 November 2025, replacing among others the Factories Act, Minimum Wages Act, Industrial Disputes Act and BOCW Act.
• Social and constitutional landmarks: 10% EWS reservation (103rd Amendment, 2019, upheld in 2022); the Women's Reservation Act — Nari Shakti Vandan Adhiniyam, 106th Amendment, 2023 — reserving one-third of Lok Sabha and State Assembly seats for women, to take effect after a census and delimitation; the criminal-law overhaul (Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam) in force 1 July 2024; NEP 2020 replacing the 1986 policy; decriminalisation of Section 377 (*Navtej Johar*, 2018).
• Foreign policy shift: from non-alignment to "multi-alignment" — the Indo-US civil nuclear deal (2005-08) and NSG waiver, Look East becoming Act East, the Quad, I2U2, BRICS, SCO membership (2017), India's G20 presidency (2022-23) and the African Union's admission to the G20; continuing boundary friction with China (Doklam 2017, Galwan 2020).
• Science and strategy: Chandrayaan-1 (2008), Mangalyaan (2013), Chandrayaan-3 south-polar landing (2023), Gaganyaan under development; the space sector opened to private players through IN-SPACe (2020) and the Indian Space Policy 2023.

Historiographical approaches

• Nationalist/liberal: India as a successful democratic and secular state-building project — Bipan Chandra, Mridula Mukherjee, Aditya Mukherjee (*India Since Independence*).
• Marxist/political-economy: the state as a mediator between big business, rural landed classes and the bureaucracy — Pranab Bardhan's "dominant proprietary classes"; critiques of the "Hindu rate of growth" (Raj Krishna) and of licensing.
• Subaltern and social-history: peasants, Dalits, Adivasis and women as agents — Ranajit Guha's school; studies of Telangana (1946-51), Naxalbari (1967), Chipko (1973), Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Dalit Panthers.
• Revisionist/statist: Ramachandra Guha's *India After Gandhi* on the "unnatural nation"; Sunil Khilnani's *The Idea of India*; Atul Kohli on state capacity and the "crisis of governability".
• Gender history: partition and women's recovery (Urvashi Butalia, Ritu Menon, Kamla Bhasin); the Towards Equality report (1974) and the women's movement after Mathura (1980).

Key points

• Instrument of Accession - the legal device by which princely states joined India, ceding defence, external affairs and communications.
• Operation Polo (1948) - police action integrating Hyderabad; Junagadh resolved by plebiscite, Goa by military action in 1961.
• Congress system - Rajni Kothari's term for one-party dominance with real competition occurring inside the Congress.
• Mahalanobis model - the Second Plan's heavy-industry-first strategy built on public-sector steel and machine-building.
• Industrial Policy Resolution 1956 - reserved core sectors for the state; the backbone of the licence-permit raj until 1991.
• Land reform package - zamindari abolition (largely done), tenancy reform and ceilings (widely evaded), consolidation.
• Green Revolution - HYV seeds, fertiliser, irrigation and MSP from 1966-67; made India food-grain self-sufficient but regionally skewed to Punjab, Haryana and western UP.
• States Reorganisation Act, 1956 - redrew state boundaries on linguistic lines after the Fazl Ali Commission.
• Basic structure doctrine - *Kesavananda Bharati* (1973): Parliament may amend the Constitution but not destroy its essential features.
• Emergency (1975-77) - Article 352 proclamation on "internal disturbance"; censorship, MISA, the 42nd Amendment; reversed by the 44th Amendment, 1978.
• Mandal Commission - 1979 OBC commission; 27% central reservation in 1990, upheld in *Indra Sawhney* (1992) with the creamy-layer test and ~50% ceiling.
• 1991 crisis and LPG - reserves near two weeks of imports forced devaluation, de-licensing, disinvestment and trade opening.
• 73rd and 74th Amendments - constitutional status for panchayats and municipalities from 1993, with one-third seats for women.
• Anti-defection law - Tenth Schedule (1985), tightened in 2003; a response to the defection politics of 1967 onwards.
• Pokhran I and II - 1974 "peaceful nuclear explosion" and the 1998 tests; India stayed outside the NPT and declared no-first-use.
• Non-alignment to multi-alignment - NAM in 1961; today issue-based partnerships (Quad, BRICS, SCO) with strategic autonomy retained.
• Rights-based welfare - RTI 2005, MGNREGA 2005, FRA 2006, RTE 2009, NFSA 2013 shifted entitlements from schemes to statutory rights (MGNREGA was replaced by the VB-G RAM G Act, 2025 from 1 July 2026).
• Recent legal overhaul - GST 2017 (5/18/40% from 22 September 2025), BNS/BNSS/BSA from 1 July 2024, four Labour Codes from 21 November 2025, Income-tax Act, 2025 from 1 April 2026.

Examples

Case 1 - Why Hyderabad was integrated by force while Junagadh was not.

1. Both had rulers whose choice contradicted their territory's geography and population — Junagadh's Nawab acceded to Pakistan though the state was in Kathiawar with a Hindu majority; Hyderabad's Nizam sought independence.
2. Junagadh was small, coastal and surrounded by acceding Kathiawar states; India blockaded it, the Nawab fled, and a plebiscite in February 1948 returned an overwhelming vote for India — a legitimating device India could also cite against Pakistan on Kashmir.
3. Hyderabad was large, landlocked, in the Deccan's centre, with the Razakar militia and a parallel communist-led peasant insurgency in Telangana — a plebiscite was impossible to organise and delay risked a secessionist enclave.
4. Standstill Agreement (November 1947) bought a year; when it failed, Operation Polo (13-18 September 1948) ended resistance in five days.
5. Conclusion: the instrument chosen matched the state's size, contiguity and internal order, not a single doctrine — the examiner's expected answer.

Case 2 - Trace the Second Plan's logic and its failure.

1. Premise: a poor country cannot import its way to industrialisation, so it must build capital-goods capacity first (Mahalanobis's two- and four-sector models).
2. Instruments: public investment in steel, heavy machinery and power; licensing to direct private investment; import substitution behind high tariffs.
3. Finance: domestic savings were about 10-12% of GDP against the plan's needs — deficit financing plus foreign aid.
4. Shock: the 1957-58 foreign-exchange crisis forced import cuts and plan trimming; agriculture, allotted a smaller share, grew slowly.
5. Outcome: a capital-goods base, PSU steel and a scientific establishment were created, but food imports (PL-480), low total factor productivity and a consumer-goods shortage followed — the setting for the Green Revolution and for 1991.

Case 3 - Constitutional consequences of the Emergency (a two-amendment comparison).

Case 4 - The 1991 reforms: sequence of steps.

1. June 1991 — reserves at roughly two weeks of imports; sovereign default risk; gold shipped as collateral.
2. 1 and 3 July 1991 — the rupee devalued in two steps (together about 18-19% against the dollar).
3. 24 July 1991 — Budget plus the New Industrial Policy: licensing abolished except for a short list (then 18 industries, since narrowed), MRTP pre-entry approval scrapped, automatic FDI up to 51% in priority sectors, public-sector reservation cut from 17 industries to 8.
4. Trade and finance — peak tariffs cut sharply through the 1990s, the rupee made convertible on the current account (1994), SEBI empowered (1992), partial PSU disinvestment begun.
5. Result — growth rose from about 5-6% to the 6-8% range in the 2000s and poverty fell, but employment growth, agricultural investment and health-education spending lagged; this unevenness is the standard examination critique.

Case 5 - Timeline anchors for one-mark and prelims questions.

Where it is used

• Civil services and state PSCs: UPSC GS-I (post-independence consolidation and reorganisation), GS-II (constitutional amendments, federalism, panchayats) and the History optional; interview boards ask about reorganisation, the Emergency and reforms with a current-affairs link.
• Teaching and academia: UGC-NET and CSIR-UGC fellowship History papers, college lectureship interviews, MA/MPhil coursework on Contemporary India; NCERT and state-board textbook writing and review.
• Policy, think-tanks and development sector: NITI Aayog, ICSSR, Centre for Policy Research, Observer Research Foundation, PRS Legislative Research and large NGOs use this history to frame welfare, land and federal-finance work.
• Journalism, publishing and content: political and explanatory journalism, documentary research, fact-checking units, UPSC coaching content and ed-tech scripting.
• Archives, museums and heritage: National Archives of India, Nehru Memorial (PMML), state archives, oral-history projects on Partition (the 1947 Partition Archive) — archivist and curator roles.
• Banking, SSC and PSU recruitment: general-awareness sections test amendments, five-year plans, nationalisation, wars and reform milestones; also useful in CSR, government-relations and ESG-policy roles.

Interview questions

• Q: How were 562 princely states integrated so quickly? A: Through a graded legal instrument — the Standstill Agreement plus the Instrument of Accession covering only defence, external affairs and communications — backed by privy purses and Patel's blend of persuasion and credible force, with full merger negotiated later.
• Q: Was the linguistic reorganisation of states a concession to separatism? A: No — the standard argument is the opposite: by conceding language it removed a cultural grievance from politics, so demands stayed within the Union instead of turning secessionist.
• Q: What exactly did the 1962 war change? A: It ended the illusion of Panchsheel-based security, prompted a large defence build-up and a new intelligence and mountain-warfare capability, and politically weakened Nehru and non-alignment's domestic credibility.
• Q: Why is the basic structure doctrine the single most important post-independence constitutional development? A: *Kesavananda Bharati* (1973) made Parliament's amending power limited by essential features such as judicial review, federalism and free elections, which is why the 42nd Amendment's curbs could be struck down in *Minerva Mills*.
• Q: Give the real causes of the 1975 Emergency, not just the court verdict. A: The Allahabad judgment was the trigger; the causes were post-1971 economic distress (the oil shock, inflation, food scarcity), the Navnirman and Bihar movements, the railway strike, and a centralised, personalised party structure with weakened institutions.
• Q: Did the Green Revolution succeed? A: It made India self-sufficient in food grains and ended famine-level dependence on imports, but it concentrated gains in irrigated wheat-rice belts, favoured larger landholders, and left groundwater depletion, soil degradation and input-subsidy distortions.
• Q: Was 1991 a rupture or a continuation? A: Partly a continuation — piecemeal liberalisation began in the late 1970s and under Rajiv Gandhi — but the balance-of-payments crisis made the shift decisive in de-licensing, trade and the exchange rate; the welfare state expanded afterwards rather than shrinking.
• Q: Explain "Mandal, Mandir, Market" in one answer. A: The three forces that reshaped the 1990s — OBC assertion through Mandal reservations, Hindu-nationalist mobilisation around Ayodhya, and market liberalisation — which together ended Congress dominance and produced coalition politics.
• Q: How did India's foreign policy change without abandoning strategic autonomy? A: Non-alignment became multi-alignment: issue-based partnerships such as the Quad, BRICS and SCO simultaneously, with no treaty alliance and no bloc membership, so autonomy is preserved while interests are pursued.
• Q: What made Indian democracy survive when comparable new states did not? A: A long pre-independence experience of elections and party organisation, universal franchise from the start, an autonomous Election Commission and judiciary, federal accommodation of language and region, and a disciplined army kept out of politics.
• Q: Which single reform most changed local governance? A: The 73rd and 74th Amendments (in force 1993) — they made panchayats and municipalities constitutional bodies with mandatory five-yearly elections, State Election Commissions, Finance Commissions and one-third reservation for women; devolution of funds and functionaries remains uneven.
• Q: Name a post-2020 change you would mention in a contemporary-India answer. A: The replacement of colonial-era and mid-century statutes — BNS/BNSS/BSA from 1 July 2024, the four Labour Codes from 21 November 2025 and the Income-tax Act, 2025 from 1 April 2026 — the largest legal recodification since independence.

Common mistakes

• Treating Partition's casualty and migration figures as settled numbers; they are contested estimates and should be presented as ranges.
• Saying Article 370 was "repealed" — it was made inoperative by a 2019 Presidential Order and the state reorganised by Act of Parliament; Article 35A was omitted.
• Confusing the 42nd and 44th Amendments, or crediting the 44th with adding "secular" to the Preamble (that was the 42nd).
• Dating the 73rd and 74th Amendments to 1993 as "passed" — they were passed in 1992 and came into force in 1993; similarly, giving the 106th Amendment immediate effect when it awaits a census and delimitation.
• Writing that Indira Gandhi "abolished" the princely order in 1947 — privy purses and titles were abolished by the 26th Amendment in 1971.
• Describing 1991 as wholesale privatisation; it was de-licensing, disinvestment of minority stakes and trade liberalisation, with banking and insurance opened only gradually.
• Narrating only chronology in long answers — examiners mark causation, historiographical position and consequence, so each paragraph needs an argument, not a date list.

Related topics

• The Indian national movement · Colonial India · Indian Constitution and political institutions · Indian economy since 1947: planning and reforms · Indian foreign policy and neighbourhood relations · Social movements and gender history in modern India.