The article seeks to examine the contested politics of memory-making in postcolonial, Hindu nationalist India through the figure of Adivasi, anti-colonial leader Birsa Munda. It argues that the Indian state has engaged in a dual process of appropriation and erasure by monumentalizing Birsa through large-scale statuary, selectively framing his legacy within a sanitized narrative of national belonging. Such representational strategies function to depoliticize the contemporary struggles of Adivasis living under abject conditions of dispossession, subject to paroxysmal violence. In contrast, the article foregrounds the counter-mnemonic practices of the Pathalgadi movement in Jharkhand, through erecting smadhi sthals and pathals as subaltern attempts at reclamation of Birsa’s legacy. By attending to the material dimensions of such practices of resistance, the article frames decolonization not as a finished event, but an unfinished labour of mnemonic resistance against statist forms of historical closure. The article endeavours to make a twofold contribution: firstly, it contributes to the mnemonic turn in International Relations (IR) – by foregrounding Adivasi mnemonic agency; and secondly, it reconceptualizes decolonization as an embodied, material, and ongoing practice of reclaiming memory from statist memory regimes. In doing so, the article calls for IR to engage with the politics of Adivasi memorial praxis in the Global South.

South Asia has a unique geographical profile, with the mighty Himalayas in the north and a long coastline in the south along its eastern and western borders. In the past few decades, with human population growth, and increasing urbanisation and industrialisation, the climate has been a casualty, with an adverse impact on physical health and well-being and on mental health. There have been certain initiatives on the part of local governments in the form of action plans on climate change, but the effects of these initiatives are yet to be seen. Research from South Asia on the impact of climate change on mental health is still at preliminary level.

Efforts on loss and damage assessments primarily focus on the macro-level assessments that often overlook micro-level heterogeneity. This paper adopts a bottom-up approach by measuring household-level L&Ds from cyclones. Estimates are derived for a representative household in Odisha, India, using two case studies: a super cyclone and a very severe cyclone., Data were collected through focus group discussions and household surveys, and were valued using the then prevailing market prices. The findings suggest that the annual L&Ds for a coastal household in Odisha amount to USD 193 from a super cyclone and USD 396 from severe cyclones, measured in 2014 prices and exchange rate (1 USD = INR 60.95). While the super cyclone caused extensive losses, a substantial portion of the damage was compensated through government support and international aid. In contrast, very severe cyclones are more frequent but receive limited external assistance, leaving households to cope largely on their own. L&D assessment across different occupational groups reveals significant disparities in aid distribution and insurance coverage. Given that the area is a core zone of cyclogenesis, localised resource mobilisation and expanded insurance coverage should be prioritised, along with a fairer aid distribution mechanism, to strengthen disaster management.

Political and legal theorists have long been interested in how the principle of national self-determination emerged over the course of the twentieth century, particularly in relation to anti-colonial movements. In general, national self-determination has been associated with the anti-colonial turn to statehood, sovereignty, and representative government. This article recovers an anti-statist, anti-electoral theorization of self-determination from the work of Indian political thinker Radhakamal Mukerjee. I show how Mukerjee’s engagement with evolutionary theories of politics in the early twentieth century led him to depart from Indian nationalist appropriations of the discourse of self-determination in the aftermath of WWI. Mukerjee historicized state sovereignty, representative government, and individual rights as products of Western Europe’s trajectory of political development and constructed “Asia” as a region marked by anti-statist collectivism. The article thereby highlights the overlooked role of evolutionary arguments in forming a novel, anti-statist conceptualization of anti-colonial self-determination.

This article argues that the India League’s 1942–47 anticolonial campaign for a Constituent Assembly for India played a constitutive role in Indian independence. It examines the Constituent Assembly not as an institution that followed the decision to offer India independence but as an anticolonial idea that helped produce it. A necessary part of this was the dissolution of the ‘minority veto’ placed on Indian constitutional progress, mainly by the Conservative Party. It traces the transmission of the Constituent Assembly idea through the India League’s transnational networks until it became a Congress demand in India and a Labour Party initiative in Britain, leading to the Cripps Mission and the policy of the 1945 Labour government. In doing so this article challenges the historiography of geopolitical decolonization by finding Indian independence to be the product of an anticolonial campaign that operated through solidarity and elective affinities with the global left. This was contested by both the Conservative Party and the Muslim League, and the article also examines how Muslim League opposition to being ‘minoritized’ within the Constituent Assembly contributed to the Partition of India.

Self-rated health (SRH) is a validated epidemiological measure that captures an individual’s overall health perception and predicts morbidity and mortality. Despite extensive research on SRH among older adults in India, evidence on its transition across the life course remains limited. Using data from 70,595 individuals aged 45 years and above from the Longitudinal Aging Study in India (LASI) 2017–2018, this study examined transitions in SRH from childhood to older adulthood. An adverse SRH trajectory was defined as a shift from good childhood health to poor or fair health in later life. Descriptive, bivariate, and multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted. Overall, 51% of older adults experienced an adverse SRH trajectory. Higher odds were observed among women (AOR: 1.30), individuals with substance consumption (AOR:1.24), chronic multimorbidity (AOR: 3.37), functional limitations (AOR: 2.03), and depression (AOR: 1.51). Early-life disadvantages – child labour, child marriage, and persistent household poverty – were also significant risk factors. In contrast, higher education and participation in social and physical activities were protective. These findings indicate that an adverse subjective health trajectory is shaped by cumulative life-course exposures rather than ageing alone. Strengthening early-life social investments and community-based wellness initiatives is vital to promote healthy and equitable ageing in India.

Village India, edited by McKim Marriott and included in a series on cultures and civilisations edited by Robert Redfield and Milton Singer, was a widely read and influential book published in 1955 at the beginning of the ‘village studies era’ in modern Indian anthropology. For Redfield and Singer, the two main questions were whether the Indian village as a ‘little community’ was ‘isolable’, and how Indian culture and civilisation could be understood through village studies. But for several of the eight contributing authors to Village India, especially M. N. Srinivas—who edited India’s Villages, also published in 1955—the principal subject matter was the structure of the village community itself, together with its unity and autonomy, and most readers tended to take the same view. There were various reasons for this, including Redfield and Singer’s failure to explain the book’s aims and objectives clearly in their foreword. Moreover, only Marriott seriously discussed their question about understanding Indian civilisation. Also important was Louis Dumont and David Pocock’s article reviewing both Village India and India’s Villages. Dumont and Pocock’s insistence that the village is not a crucial ‘social fact’ in India, together with Srinivas’s later response, strengthened the belief that the village’s ‘sociological reality’ and unity, rather than its relationship with Indian civilisation, was the key question discussed in Village India. This retrospective analysis of Village India sheds new light on its production and reception, and on its role in the development of modern Indian anthropology.

Maternity benefits are historically envisioned as a means to promote maternal and infant health in India. It was a major rationale for the Maternity Benefit Act, 1961. However, maternity benefits also came to be increasingly questioned in the mid-1960s for allegedly leading to more births and ‘derailing’ the national family planning programme. Limiting maternity benefits as a disincentive strategy for population control was proposed through various platforms. This article examines one such attempt in the Indian Parliament. During the discussion on the Maternity Benefit (Amendment) Bill of 1965, Shakuntala Paranjpye, a renowned advocate for birth control, sought to add a restrictive clause limiting maternity benefits to the first two deliveries. Despite leading to an intense debate among the legislators, the amendment was voted down. Nevertheless, the debates are worth exploring to understand the prevailing notions about reproductive behaviour, differential fertility, and alleged ignorance of the working-class women. Primarily drawing on the legislative debates on the Maternity Benefit Act, this article shows how maternity benefits became a distinctive site for negotiating population control. By limiting maternity benefits, this article argues, the amendment sought to regulate the reproductive behaviour of the working class and promote a limited and ‘quality’ population.

India’s rising twin birth rate, driven by assisted reproductive technologies and delayed childbearing, generates approximately 30,000−40,000 twin pairs annually, yet this invaluable research resource remains systematically underutilized. While established twin registries in the United Kingdom, Australia, and Nordic countries have transformed understanding of disease heritability and gene-environment interactions, India, despite its 1.4 billion population and exceptional genetic diversity, lacks a coordinated infrastructure to capitalize on this scientific opportunity. Twin studies provide nature’s ideal control experiment, enabling researchers to disentangle genetic predisposition from environmental influences through comparison of monozygotic and dizygotic pairs, with discordant twins offering particularly powerful insights into modifiable risk factors. India’s extraordinary genetic heterogeneity, encompassing over 4600 distinct population groups, coupled with rapid environmental transitions including urbanization, dietary shifts, and pollution exposure, creates unparalleled natural experiments for investigating conditions demonstrating marked interpopulation variation such as type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and neuropsychiatric disorders. Establishing a National Twin Registry through a federated model linking existing birth registries with opt-in research participation, leveraging digital health infrastructure like Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, would require modest investment while generating insights applicable across the disease spectrum. Initiating pilot registries in states with robust health systems such as Kerala, Tamil Nadu or Karnataka would enable iterative refinement before national expansion. International collaborations with established registries could accelerate development while preserving data sovereignty through robust governance frameworks. A National Twin Registry represents a strategic imperative for transitioning India from a research subject pool to a research leader in precision medicine, enabling Indian investigators to drive discovery addressing India-specific health priorities.