Rajni Kothari’s Career in Political Science
| Author | Susanne Hoeber Rudolph,Lloyd I. Rudolph |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| DOI | 10.1177/2321023013482782 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| Subject Matter | Symposium |
A Global Threat
Symposium
11
Studies in Indian Politics
Rajni Kothari’s Career
1(1) 1–5
© 2013 Lokniti, Centre for the
in Political Science
Study of Developing Societies
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
Lloyd I. Rudolph
DOI: 10.1177/2321023013482782
http://inp.sagepub.com
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
The career of Rajni Kothari helps narrate the story of how political science in India acquired a measure
of national and international visibility and standing. Much of this story is told through a kind of personal
ethnography on which we draw, Kothari’s 2002 book, Memoirs: Uneasy is the Life of the Mind. It details
Kothari’s role as an institution-builder and a conceptual and methodological pioneer. We tell Rajni
Kothari’s story from the mid-1950s through the mid-1970s when his fierce opposition to Indira Gandhi’s
emergency changed his life’s trajectory, eventuating in the formation of Lokayan, ‘a Gandhian-socialist’
(this is how Gail Omvedt characterized Kothari’s Lokayan [Omvedt, 1993, p. 193]) civil society organi-
zation that strived to arouse political participation and promoted social change at the grassroots. Kothari’s
shaping of political science in India arises not only from the book he regarded as ‘a classic’ (Kothari,
2002, p. 69) but also and more fundamentally from his pioneering work in behavioural political science,
particularly studies of electoral behaviour and his work on the role of caste in Indian politics.
Our story starts with a double recognition, one by Sachin Chaudhury, the fabled founding editor of
The Economic Weekly, the other by Richard Park, perhaps the first American political scientist of India
and himself something of an institution-builder.
After obtaining a B.Sc. (Economics) at the London School of Economics, Kothari returned from
England in the mid-1950s and in 1958 took up a post as lecturer in the Political Science and Economics
departments at the University of Baroda. He reports a ‘breakthrough’ as a result of ‘chance encounters’
during his ‘first field investigation’ at the All India Congress Committee session at Bhavnagar in Gujarat.
He gained access to:
some rather well-known individuals ... and entered into extensive discussions with all types of Congressmen
from different regions ... discovering widespread existence of factions and groups ... the play of power conflicts
... and how all this was shaping the running of government at various levels. (Kothari, 2002, pp. 30–31)
‘Spurred by the “field work” at Bhavnagar’, Kothari wrote a series of six articles in 1961 under the
title ‘Form and Substance in Indian Politics’. ‘Young though I was’, Sachin Chaudhury ‘reposed full
trust in me’ by publishing the first article in a series, counting on Kothari to deliver the rest in successive
weeks. ‘In a matter of a few years’, Kothari writes, ‘I was able to launch, along with some others, what
many of [my] reviewers have dubbed as a “new political science” ’ (ibid.).
Kothari’s second recognition happened soon thereafter when his ‘Form and Substance’ series which,
he tells us, ‘created quite an impact’, caught the attention of Richard Park, resident head of the Asia
Foundation in India. Kothari quotes Park’s description of the series as ‘a breath of fresh air in
understanding Indian politics’. Park provided Kothari with ‘a small sum of money, enough it seems, to
Lloyd I. Rudolph is Professor Emeritus, University of Chicago, Chicago. E-mail: lrudolph@uchicago.edu
Susanne Hoeber Rudolph is Professor Emerita, University of Chicago, Chicago.
E-mail: srudolph@midway.uchicago.edu
India Quarterly, 66, 2 (2010): 133–149
2
Lloyd I. Rudolph and Susanne Hoeber Rudolph
transform ‘a large empty hall into a workspace for half a dozen people’. This space, the then unused
Indian Adult Education Association located at I.P....
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