Austin

Granville Seward Austin (1927-2014) was the author of two seminal works on the political history of the Indian Constitution: The Indian Constitution, Cornerstone of a Nation (1966), and Working a Democratic Constitution: A History of the Indian Experience (1999, 2003).

Known familiarly as "Red," Austin at times called himself an "independent scholar" and "journalist historian." Born in Boston in 1927 and raised in Vermont, he was a longtime resident of the Washington, D.C. area, working for various government agencies during the thirty-some years between the publications of his two books. His primary research subjects were both India and the Middle East, in particular the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and peace process.

Austin was a private in the U.S. Army 1945-1946, and was graduated from Dartmouth College in 1950 with a degree in American literature. After college, he worked as a reporter and photographer for a Vermont-New Hampshire newspaper. He and Nancy McConnell were married in 1954, and the couple's four children were born between the years 1955 and 1962. Austin worked for the U.S. Information Service as a photographer and reporter in Vietnam from 1954 to 1956, as well as heading the U.S.I.S. office in Haiphong. He moved on to Beirut, Lebanon, serving the U.S.I.S. as reporter, political analyst, and press attaché at the American Embassy (1957-58). Austin noted that in Beirut he was introduced to Israeli-Palestinian issues, which remained a lifelong interest.

Austin studied Modern Indian History at St. Antony's College at Oxford University, earning his DPhil in 1964. At the same time, from 1960 to 1966, he was a Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs (ICWA), living at times in India as well as in Oxford, and writing the requisite newsletters for ICWA under then-Executive Director Richard Nolte. Through his pursuit of contacts in India, Austin gained access to personal papers in private collections and conducted interviews with framers of the Indian Constitution. His original research for his Oxford thesis was the basis for his first book, The Indian Constitution: Cornerstone of a Nation, published with Oxford University Press in 1966. The book became essential reading for Constitutional scholars within the republic of India as well as other parts of the world.

From 1966 to 1970, Austin worked for the U.S. State Department as Director in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Office for the Near East and South Asia, 1966-1970, with a focus on Near Eastern and South Asian issues. In 1970, he worked for part of the year as Executive Assistant to U.S. Senator Clifford P. Case. From 1971 to 1974, he worked for the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as Special Assistant for International Affairs to the Secretary of DHEW. He then returned to the State Department as a member of the Policy Planning Staff, focusing on the Middle East, from 1974 to 1977. Some of Austin's State Department memoranda are represented in the collection. Austin also taught Modern Indian History at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), 1975-1976. His occasional paper "Public Policy in Education" was published in 1977.

He moved on to the Department of Energy, where he was Acting Deputy Inspector General from 1977 to 1978. He spent 1978-1979 as a contract consultant before becoming the Director of Communications for the Council on Foundations (1979-1982). Austin was Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Institute of Current World Affairs from 1981 to 1983.

During the mid-1980s, Austin wrote primarily about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He published "Palestinian Nationalism" with Johns Hopkins' SAIS in 1984. During the mid-1980s, he worked on building a Committee for Arab-Israeli Peace among American Christians, Jews and Muslims.

Files in his papers reflect that between 1985 and 1987, Austin worked on an intended book about Israeli-Arab relations (called the "Two Societies" book in his notes), to be co-authored with David Schoenbaum—this book did not come out as planned, though David Schoenbaum did publish The United States and the State of Israel with Oxford University Press in 1993.

Austin took up research on India again by the late 1980s. Working independently and as the recipient of grants from the Fulbright Program, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and St. Antony's College Oxford, Austin traveled to India from 1990 to 1991 and completed research for a book to follow up on the workings of the Indian Constitution. Once again Austin used his network to gain access to private papers in India, and to conduct hundreds of personal interviews with politicians and judges, as well as undertaking archival research at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, among others.

The resulting book, Working a Democratic Constitution: A History of the Indian Experience was published by Oxford University Press in 1999, with a second edition in 2003. Like Austin's first book, the work became an indispensable resource for those studying India's Constitutional history.

A memoir, Retrieving Times, about Austin's childhood and hometown of Norwich, Vermont, was published by White River Press in 2008. In 2011, the Republic of India presented Austin with the Padma Shri Award, the republic's fourth highest civilian award, in recognition of distinguished contribution in Literature and Education. Austin continued to collect material on and correspond about India and the Middle East until his death in 2014.