South Asian and Western Administrative Experience: The Past in the Present

The task of this chapter, as posed by the section editor, is to discuss the intricate balance between and, sometimes merging of, Western with indigenous traditions of governance and government. By comparing the precolonial and colonial with the post-colonial state and administrative traditions, we can develop an understanding of the degree to which Western conceptions of democracy and management have influenced the non-Western world. My assignment here is to consider the experiences of India in this subtle sequence of recursive interactions in order to show, in Raadschelder's words in the Introduction to this section, through cross-time and cross-national analysis, that historical knowledge is a ...