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In this groundbreaking book, Raghavan uses previously untapped archival sources to weave together new stories about the experiences of post-partition state-making in South Asia. Through meticulous research, it challenges the existing wisdom about the preponderance of animosity and the rhetoric of war. The book shows how amity and a spirit of cordiality governed relations between the states of India and Pakistan in the first five years after partition. Arguing that a hitherto overlooked set of considerations have to be integrated more closely into the analysis of bilateral dialogue, this book analyses the developments leading to the No War correspondence between Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan, the signing of a ‘Minorities’ Pact between the two prime ministers, and the early stages of the Indus Waters negotiations, as well as exploring the calculations of Indian and Pakistani delegates at a series of interdominion conferences held in the years after partition. This book will be of interest to specialists in histories of diplomatic practice as well as a general audience in search of narratives of peace in the South Asia region

Institutions are norms that undergird organizations and are reflected in laws and practices. Scholars point towards the ‘stickiness’ of institutions as stubbornly persisting on the historical landscape. As institutions tend to persist, the related political, administrative, and social processes persist as well. Therefore, it is puzzling when perpetuating institutions change paths. This book unravels one such puzzle by examining the process of institutional change through the lenses of transformation in the ‘information regime’ in India by tracing the passage of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, 2005. Historically, in India, the norm of secrecy was entrenched within the state, perpetuating since colonial times. Yet, in 2005, the RTI Act was enacted heralding an institutional shift from the norm of ‘secrecy’ to the new norm of ‘openness’. What explains this institutional change? Based on new historical evidence overlooked in the mainstream literature, this book shows that the RTI Act was path-dependent on ideas of openness that emerged within the state since Independence. It argues that an endogenous policy discourse on enacting legislation on access to information had begun since Independence; it incrementally evolved and reached a ‘tipping point’ and, after surviving many political challenges, resulted in institutional change. Initially these ideas emerged gradually and incrementally as part of opposition politics, but eventually became part of mainstream politics. The book presents an alternate perspective to the mainstream narrative explaining the evolution of the RTI Act and makes theoretical contribution to the literature on institutional change.

This book examines the political landscape that followed the 2010 elections in Myanmar and the subsequent transition from direct military rule to a semi-civilian, ‘hybrid’ regime. Striking political, social, and economic transformations have indeed taken place in the long-isolated country since the military junta disbanded in March 2011. To better construe – and question – what has routinely been labelled a ‘Burmese Spring’, the book examines the reasons behind the ongoing political transition, as well as the role of the Burmese armed forces in the process. The book draws on in-depth interviews with Burmese political actors, party leaders, parliamentarians, active and retired army officers. It also takes its cue from comparative scholarship on civil-military relations and post-authoritarian politics, looking at the ‘praetorian’ logic to explain the transitional moment. Myanmar’s road to democratic change is, however, paved with obstacles. As the book suggests, the continuing military intervention in domestic politics, the resilience of bureaucratic, economic and political clientelism at all levels of society, the towering presence of Aung San Suu Kyi, the shadowy influence of regional and global powers, and the enduring concerns about interethnic and interreligious relations, all are strong reminders of the series of elemental conundrums which Myanmar will have to deal with in order to achieve democratization, sustainable development and peace.

East of India, South of China is an incisive analysis of the ebbs and flows of the geopolitical fortunes of India and China—the two Asian giants—in Southeast Asia. Amitav Acharya charts the key events and turning points in the triangular relationship between India, China, and Southeast Asia since the times of Jawaharlal Nehru, and unravels its importance in the construction of the Asian and global strategic order. The book shows how India’s pre-eminent role in designing the regional architecture in Asia was diluted after the Bandung era, especially post the Sino-India War in 1962, and how, by the 1980s, it had become a political and diplomatic non-entity—if not a pariah—in Southeast Asia even as China emerged as a dominant regional power over the next three decades. The last two decades, however, have seen India making substantial inroads into the ASEAN scene with its ‘Look East’ policies, altering power equations in the region to no small degree. Revisiting the question of contemporary Asian order and posing critical questions about the future of regional leadership in Asia, Acharya challenges the conventional wisdom that imagined the Asian order solely premised upon US–Japan–China relations and gave little attention to India–China–Southeast Asia relations.

China and India are emerging as major maritime powers as part of long-term shifts in the regional balance of power. As their wealth, interests, and power grow, the two countries are increasingly bumping up against each other across the Indo-Pacific. China’s growing naval presence in the Indian Ocean is seen by many as challenging India’s aspirations towards regional leadership and major power status. How India and China get along in this shared maritime space—cooperation, coexistence, competition, or confrontation—will be one of the key strategic challenges for the entire region. India and China at Sea is an essential resource in understanding how the two countries will interact as major maritime powers in the coming decades. The essays in the volume, by noted strategic analysts from across the world, seek to better understand Indian and Chinese perspectives about their roles in the Indian Ocean and their evolving naval strategies towards each other.

In careers that spanned six decades, Padma Bhushan award winners Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph elaborated seminal insights about Indian politics. The Rudolphs’ rigorous and remarkably empathetic study of India coupled with their extensive reading of social science theory served as the basis for their development of a broader interpretive mode of political analysis centered on the complex processes by which people construct meaning and motivation for political action. The eminent contributors to this volume pay tribute to the Rudolphs’ scholarship by examining its contributions to their own cutting-edge research as they advance the frontiers of the study of Indian politics and social science writ large. Their engaging essays analyze vital topics including how ‘situated knowledge’ shapes discourse, moral imagination, political strategies, and institutional change. They apply this interpretive approach to Indian politics to illuminate how the interaction of caste, class, gender, and religion has structured political mobilization, how changing social and political relations have affected education policy and civil–military relations, and how political leadership is forging the future of Indian politics.

Majoritarian State traces the ascendance of Hindu nationalism in contemporary India. Led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the BJP administration has established an ethno-religious and populist style of rule since 2014. Its agenda is also pursued beyond the formal branches of government, as the new dispensation portrays conventional social hierarchies as intrinsic to Indian culture while condoning communal and caste- and gender-based violence. The contributors explore how Hindutva ideology has permeated the state apparatus and formal institutions, and how Hindutva activists exert control over civil society via vigilante groups, cultural policing and violence. Groups and regions portrayed as ‘enemies’ of the Indian state are the losers in a new order promoting the interests of the urban middle class and business elites. As this majoritarian ideology pervades the media and public discourse, it also affects the judiciary, universities and cultural institutions, increasingly captured by Hindu nationalists. Dissent and difference are silenced and debate increasingly side-lined as the press is muzzled or intimidated in the courts. Internationally, the BJP government has emphasized hard power and a fast-expanding security state. This collection of essays offers rich empirical analysis and documentation to investigate the causes and consequences of the illiberal turn taken by the world’s largest democracy.

This book brings together two sets of articles and book chapters by the late author, an extraordinary scholar of Islam in South Asia. The first part of the volume examines Shia–Sunni relations in Pakistan, while the second concerns violent Islamism in the country, covering both the Talibanisation of the Pashtun belt and the jihadi dimension of South Asian Salafism. The book explores the many reasons why Pakistan has been the crucible of political Islam. It offers a historical view of this development, factoring in the impact of colonialism and conflict, including the Soviet–Afghan War and the post-9/11 Western military operations in Afghanistan. While making clear the major importance of these external influences, from Saudi Arabia and Iran to the US, the book also places Pakistan's political Islam in the context of local cultures, mobilising her anthropological erudition without ever indulging in culturalism. Finally, it emphasises the sociological determinants of sectarianism, Talibanism and jihadism, as well as the political economy of these ideologies. The book is indispensable for understanding the present dynamics of Pakistan.

Why are relations between politically mobilized ethnic identities and the nation-state sometimes peaceful and at other times fraught and violent? This book sets out a novel answer to this key puzzle in world politics through a detailed comparative study of the starkly divergent trajectories of the “Tamil question” in India and Sri Lanka from the colonial era to the present day. Whilst Tamil and national identities have peaceably harmonized in India, in Sri Lanka these have come into escalating and violent contradiction, leading to three decades of armed conflict and simmering antagonism since the civil war’s brutal end in 2009. The book links these differing outcomes that emerged from similar starting conditions and comparable historical conditions to distinct and contingent patters of political contestation and mobilization in the two states. Indian patterns of political mobilization and contestation produced a nation-state inclusive of the Tamils, whilst in Sri Lanka a different pattern of politics produced a hierarchical Sinhala Buddhist nation state hostile to Tamils and their claims. The analyses situate these dynamics within changing international contexts and set out how these once largely separate patterns of national-Tamil politics, and Tamil diaspora mobilization, are increasingly interwoven in the post-war internationalization of Sri Lanka’s ethnic crisis. The processes of national identity are therefore central to the analysis of ethnic conflict and have implications for its management.

Trading Worlds is an anthropological study of Afghan merchants in Afghanistan, Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The book argues that the merchants collectively form a little understood yet rapidly expanding global trading network. It contests one-sided images that depict traders from this and other conflict regions as immoral profiteers, the cronies of warlords or international drug smugglers. It shows, rather, the active role these merchants are playing in processes referred to by anthropologists as “globalisation from below”. Afghan merchants, the author demonstrates, forge and occupy critical economic niches, both at home and abroad: from the Persian Gulf to Central Asia, to the ports of the Black Sea; and in global cities such as Istanbul, Moscow and London, the traders’ activities are shaping the material and cultural lives of the diverse populations among whom they live. Through an exploration of the life histories, trading activities and everyday experiences of these mobile merchants, the book shows that traders’ worlds are informed by complex forms of knowledge, skill, ethical sensibility, and long-lasting human relationships that often cut across and dissolve boundaries of nation, ethnicity, religion and ideology.