Article ID: CBB542794844

The Kibbutz and the Ashram: Sarvodaya Agriculture, Israeli Aid, and the Global Imaginaries of Indian Development (2020)

unapi

In the first two decades of Indian independence, members of the Sarvodaya movement—India’s popular, non-state program for Gandhian social uplift—sought to partner with representatives of Israel’s developmental apparatus to build a communal agricultural settlement at Gandhi’s former ashram. Working against the lure of large-scale, Nehruvian development, Cold War politics, and cool formal diplomatic relations between the two countries, Indian votaries of small-scale rural uplift saw in Israeli collective agriculture the chance to give Gandhian “constructive work” a practical program rooted in voluntary, village-based socialism—a goal that eluded Gandhi himself. Israeli planners saw their work with Indian civil society as a means of securing the formal diplomatic sanction largely stymied by India’s relationship with the broader Muslim world. Gandhi’s vision of the Indian “village Republic” and the Israeli model of agrarian collectivism both owed their origins to nineteenth-century utopian thought, and both projects felt anachronistic by the time of their decade-long joint effort, whose initial promise succumbed to realpolitik and the hegemony of the developmental state. Yet their work foregrounds the enduring international stake that Indian civil society maintained in development and nation-building, long presumed to have withered with the arrival of the nation-state.

...More
Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB542794844/

Similar Citations

Book Jacob Darwin Hamblin; (2021)
The Wretched Atom: America's Global Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology (/isis/citation/CBB105394498/)

Thesis Smith, Jenny Leigh; (2006)
The Soviet Farm Complex: Industrial Agriculture in a Socialist Context, 1945--1965 (/isis/citation/CBB001561283/)

Book Thomas Fleischman; Paul S. Sutter; (2020)
Communist Pigs: An Animal History of East Germany's Rise and Fall (/isis/citation/CBB270031958/)

Article Gael Keig; Robin L. Hide; Susan M. Cuddy; Heinz Buettikofer; Jennifer A. Bellamy; Pieter Bleeker; David Freyne; John McAlpine; (2019)
CSIRO and Land Research in Papua New Guinea 1950–2000: Part 2: Post-Independence (/isis/citation/CBB549870452/)

Book Herbert S. Klein; Francisco Vidal Luna; (2018)
Feeding the World: Brazil's Transformation into a Modern Agricultural Economy (/isis/citation/CBB186438928/)

Article Vincent Lagendijk; (2019)
Streams of Knowledge: River Development Knowledge and the TVA on the River Mekong (/isis/citation/CBB285282788/)

Book Marcos Cueto; (2007)
The Value of Health: A History of the Pan American Health Organization (/isis/citation/CBB692281581/)

Book Marci Baranski; (2019)
Globalizing Wheat: Success and Failure of the Green Revolution (/isis/citation/CBB650890415/)

Book Rosicka, Janina Clark; Andres, Charles Michael; (2001)
Economic Transition in Historical Perspective: Lessons from the History of Economics (/isis/citation/CBB000101780/)

Book Andy Bruno; (2016)
The Nature of Soviet Power: An Arctic Environmental History (/isis/citation/CBB001811907/)

Article Vincent Lagendijk; Frank Schipper; (2016)
East, West, Home's Best: The Material Links of Cold War Yugoslavia, 1948-1980 (/isis/citation/CBB650744971/)

Authors & Contributors
Lagendijk, Vincent
McAlpine, John
Bleeker, Pieter
Chorev, Nitsan
Freyne, David
Hide, Robin L.
Concepts
Economic development
Agriculture
Socialism
Development aid
Green revolution
Environmental history
Time Periods
20th century, late
21st century
20th century
19th century
18th century
Places
India
Soviet Union
China
Israel
Mekong River
Papua New Guinea
Institutions
World Bank
Pan American Health Organization
Tennessee Valley Authority
Rockefeller Foundation
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) (Australia)
Comments

Be the first to comment!

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}

Log in or register to comment