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Reposted by Shruti Balaji

Journal of the History of Ideas @jhideas.bsky.social · 02/06/2026

The new issue of the JHI includes a cluster of articles on "Race: Histories of Idea." Shruti Balaji's contribution is "'The African Problem Is a World Problem': (Dis)locating Race in Late Colonial Indian Intellectual Thought." Read it here: muse.jhu.edu/pub/56/artic... @shrutibalaji.bsky.social

A quote from the article: "The (dis)location of elite Indian thought on "race" . . . presents an unstable relationship between questions of universal racial justice and anticolonial struggles in the years prior to India's independence. . . . Kamaladevi's and Naidu's thinking on Afro-Asian solidarities reveals how Indian intellectual thought on race traversed idealized notions of racial solidarities alongside hierarchical and paternalistic attitudes toward Africans under colonial rule."

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Shruti Balaji @shrutibalaji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

4. My findings call for a sustained research agenda on the long-neglected question of how progressive Indian elites engaged with race, racism, and racial justice in the decades prior to the Afro-Asian solidarities of the Bandung era. 🔗 Link to article: muse.jhu.edu/article/9870...

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Shruti Balaji @shrutibalaji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

3. These visions reveal tensions between anticolonialism and universal racial justice, where idealised notions of racial solidarity coexisted with more hierarchical and paternalistic attitudes toward Africans under colonial rule

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Shruti Balaji @shrutibalaji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

2. ‘Race-thinking’ served multiple, overlapping purposes: 1) As a way to identify shared oppressions (for instance, Ambedkar’s reflections on race and caste) 2) As a notion to be transcended through ideas of shared humanity and 3) As a framework used to demarcate civilisational hierarchies.

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Shruti Balaji @shrutibalaji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

1. Drawing on archival readings of Indian political leaders Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay and Sarojini Naidu’s writings and political speeches during their travels to the UK, US, and eastern and southern Africa in late colonial India, the article traces how ideas of race moved across political spaces

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Shruti Balaji @shrutibalaji.bsky.social · 01/04/2026

I’m pleased to share my new article out in the Journal of the History of Ideas (@jhideas.bsky.social) 📝✨ In this article, I (dis)locate ideas of “race” in the intellectual thought of elite Indian political thinkers in the early to mid twentieth century. Link to article and outline of arguments ⬇️

Picture showing the title page of a publication in the Journal of the History of Ideas on elite Indian intellectual thought on race c.1920-50

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