What is a People? Some Lessons from Gandhi’s India

U-M Professor of English, History, and Women’s Studies Mrinalini Sinha explores the particular construction of a people in M. K. Gandhi’s politics on his arrival in India. It takes the movement for the abolition of the indentured labor system, the first public campaign with which Gandhi was involved upon his return to India, to explore the contours of the construction of a people. The aim is to contrast the invocation of a people in Gandhi’s India with contemporary claims to a people’s politics, in revolt against an establishment elite. In short, what might Gandhi’s politics of a people have to offer to our times?