Dr Alok Oak
Postdoctoral Fellow, September 2023 - June 2024
Home Institution: University of St Andrews
Dr Alok Oak completed his PhD from University of Leiden in 2022. In 2022-23 he was a Visiting Scholar and Tutor at the School of History, University of St Andrews. Previously, he worked as a Research Associate for 'Redressing the Balance: Mahatma Gandhi's Experiments with Constructing an Alternative Society', a major research project funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (2020-22). From September 2024 he will be joining the editorial team of the 'Classical Reception Studies Network' blog. His most recent article explores the impact of the Great Depression on Gandhi’s Civil Disobedience movement (1930-33). His forthcoming publications include a chapter on the role of Mahabharata in India’s anti-colonial movement in an edited volume on the global history of the epic. His research interests are global intellectual history, histories of the British Empire and decolonization, modern Hinduism, and Marxism from the Global South.
His PhD dissertation is an intellectual biography of the eminent Indian politician and conservative nationalist thinker Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920). It explores the changing nature of Indian politics after the rise of the Indian National Congress (INC) in 1885 and juxtaposes the variants of Indian nationalism emerging out of peculiar regional histories (Maharashtra) resulting in global anti-colonial solidarities. The dissertation provides fresh insights into the tale of India’s fight for Self-government by focusing on its pre-Gandhi phase (1880-1920).
Project Title: Dominion Status as a fait accompli: A. B. Keith and the History of Commonwealth Constitutionalism in British India (1919-42)
Commonwealth Constitutional History (CCH) explores the myriad legal, philosophical, diplomatic, historical and political endeavours at preserving/dismantling the British Empire against popular dissent. Drawing upon the CCH paradigm, my project at IASH focuses on the Scottish Constitutional-historian and Indologist Arthur Berriedale Keith (1879-1944) and his engagement with British Commonwealth Constitutionalism vis-à-vis India’s demand for Dominion Status (1919-1942). Employed as the Regius Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology and Lecturer on the Constitution of the British Empire at Edinburgh University (1914-44) Keith was deeply involved in Constitutional matters pertaining to Indian dominion-hood during the interwar period. Drawing upon his voluminous writings and extensive private archive I critically examine the conceptual debates around ‘Dominion-hood’, ‘dyarchy’, and ‘Commonwealth federalism’ in the Imperial metropolis. Furthermore, the fact that Scottish intellectuals, despite their scepticism of colonialism, could not accommodate the complete rejection of alien rule in non-white colonies shows the Janus-face of the British liberal doctrine. My project would, thus, de-centre the chronology of British decolonization, expose the myopic vision of the Scottish liberal intelligentsia and chart the hurdles and contradictions in employing a legislative path to Sovereignty in colonial British India.