Teaching American History in India: Case Study of the University of Delhi

Anita Nahal

The contemporary role of the United States in world politics is a matter of intrigue and excited debate in Indian academic circles, and the history of the U.S. greatly interests students at Indian colleges and universities. Undergraduates across the country, for instance, have the option of taking one paper (class)—entitled, The History of the United States—while Master’s students generally have their choice of one or two papers, depending on the institution. It is not easy to teach the history of another country to a group of students who may have never visited that country or even read much about it and whose knowledge is acquired from popular culture and contemporary news. But through a combination of methodologies, including lectures, seminars, tutorials, pictorial history and map study, Indian students get a deeper understanding of the U.S. history.

U.S. History at the University of Delhi

The University of Delhi, which provides an excellent overall example of U.S. history as it is offered in India, is a central university with almost eighty-five colleges under its administrative authority. There are sixteen central universities in India, known as such because they receive funding from the central (federal) government. The professors in the various colleges do not have the freedom to frame their own courses but rather a central committee frames one course that is then taught in all the colleges under the university.

On average about 1,200 students annually take the exam in American history from the University of Delhi. The exam is centralized, meaning that all of the exams are collected at a central point and then passed on to a group of professors assigned to that particular course.

The current undergraduate History of the USA, 1776-1945 course taught in the various colleges of the University of Delhi includes such topics as the Making of the Republic, which examines such subtopics as the American Revolution and the Creation of the Constitution; Evolution of American Democracy which looks at Jefferson, Jackson, and the rise of political parties; and Expansion of the Frontier which analyzes Turner’s thesis and the displacement of Native Americans. Other topics include the Civil War, Reconstruction, Industrial America, Resistance and Reform, U.S. Imperialism, African American Movements, and Women’s Movements.

The required list of books include some classics like Bernard Bailyn’s The Great Republic; Charles Beard’s An Economic Interpretation of the American Constitution; J.W. Pratt’s A History of the United States Foreign Policy; Frederick Jackson Turner’s The Frontier in American History; Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee: An Indian History of the American West; James Randall’s The Civil War and Reconstruction; Kenneth Stampp’s The Peculiar Institution; Faulkner’s An Economic History of the United States of America; John Hope Franklin’s From Slavery to Freedom; Eric Foner’s The Black Past and others like Fogel and Engerman’s Time on the Cross; Gerald Grob and George Billias, eds., Interpretations of American History, Patterns and Perspectives and Boyer, Sitkoff and Woloch, eds., The Enduring Vision. Professors are free to suggest other readings.

The Master’s level paper at the University of Delhi covers the period from the War of 1812 to the end of Reconstruction. It is an in-depth study of the social, economic and political events during this period with special emphasis on slavery, the Civil War, women’s history, Native American history and African American history. Professors at this level are not at liberty to devise and structure their own course but can emphasize the topics of their choice. Annually, about twenty-five to forty students take the M.A. paper in American history. The book list is not as extensive at the Master’s level than at the undergraduate and there is more emphasis on in-depth study of primary material. To date, there has been only one M.Phil. thesis in American history at the University of Delhi and no Ph.D. thesis. The M.Phil. work is generally very difficult because students lack access to primary sources and fellowships to travel to the United States are rare. Thus, the one M.Phil. thesis that the University of Delhi did produce was based on secondary sources. Those students who are interested in pursing American history or American Studies move to Jawaharlal Nehru University, a smaller university in New Delhi, where only Master’s, M.Phil. and Ph.D. teaching is done. The University’s School of International Relations has a separate department of West European and American Studies. For Ph.D. studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University provides a small fellowship to travel to the U.S. to study and collect primary documents.

Obstacles to Teaching U.S. History

There are several main obstacles facing U.S. history teachers in India. The American history paper is taught in both English and Hindi, the national language of India, depending upon the student demography in the institution. Where the student population is equally divided, there are two sections, one in English and the other in Hindi. Where there are not enough students speaking one or the other language, however, the teaching can become quite difficult because of translation issues—instructors are required to translate from one language to the other after only a few sentences. This leads to a break in the flow of teaching and, in some cases, differences in meaning.

Another difficulty in teaching in two mediums, especially a subject that is dependent on foreign published books, is that books in translation do not exist. As a result, students who speak Hindi suffer in may ways and many important works of historical interpretation are not available. Despite these obstacles, U.S. history continues to be an intruiguing area of study for Indian students­—especially in the current global environment. With programs like those at the University of Delhi, students are better equipped to understand American history and the role of the United States in today’s world.

Sidebar

The course in U.S. History at the University of Delhi is divided into the following areas:

• The Background (pre-colonial America, indigenous people, arrival of Europeans, indentured labor)
• Making of the Republic (Revolution, interpretations, process and features of Constitution-making, Charles Beard’s interpretation and other interpretations)
• Evolution of American Democracy (Jefferson, Jackson, rise of political parties)
• Expansion of the Frontier (Turner’s thesis, displacement of Native Americans, case histories of Tecumseh and other Native American leaders)
• Early Capitalism (beginnings of industrialization, immigrants and changing composition of labor, early labor movements)
• The Agrarian South (plantation economy, slave society and resistance)
• Antebellum Foreign Policy (War of 1812, Monroe Doctrine, Manifest Destiny and the Polk Doctrine)
• Civil War (abolitionism, sectionalism, rise of Republicanism, interpretations, Lincoln and emancipation)
• Reconstruction (moderate and radical plans, the new South, participants like scalawags, carpetbaggers, African Americans, and the Ku Klux Klan)
• Industrial America (growth of capitalism and rise of big business, business cycles, depression)
• Resistance and Reform (labor movements and unionism, agrarian crises and populism, urban corruption, progressivism, New Deal)
• U.S. Imperialism (Spanish-American War, expansion in the Far East and Latin America, World War I and Wilson’s Fourteen Points, interwar foreign policy, World War II, Hiroshima and Nagasaki)
• African American Movements (Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, NAACP)
• Women’s Movements (rise of the Lowell factory system, abolitionists and women’s rights movements, suffrage, African American women’s history and movements)
• Religious, Cultural and Intellectual Trends (early revivalism, Puritans, Quakers, Mormons, Temperance, mass culture from 1900 to 1945, major literary trends from 1900 to 1945)

Anita Nahal is currently holds a postdoctoral appointment in the International Affairs and Women’s Studies Department at the Graduate School at Howard University and is an associate professor in the department of history at Sri Venkateswara College, University of Delhi, India. A former Fulbright Scholar-in-Residence and visiting associate professor at State University of New York at Binghamton, Nahal has published a workbook, The History of the United States of America, A Workbook for College Students (1998), a study guide for Indian students who are preparing for the American history examination.