South Asian Politics

https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/assam-politics-bangladesh-immigrants-elections-issue-7265102/
Despite ruling party’s silence, immigration from Bangladesh remains a theme in Assam politics
It will continue to animate and shape the state’s politics in profound and unpredictable ways in the foreseeable future.

This paper aims to bring some of Jawaharlal Nehru’s aims and vision for a free India and elucidates on Nehru’s understanding of India’s past based on his writings in his Discovery of India. The paper also aims to connect Nehru’s vison with the current state of India with its erosion of secularism.

Maoism refers to an ensemble of revolutionary ideas and practices inspired by the life and work of the Chinese political leader and philosopher Mao Tse-tung (1893Tse-tung ( -1976. Broadly, these ideas and practices seek to deploy militant, even violent methods to install a new radical democratic regime that is committed to the collective pursuit of dignity, freedom, and equality.

King Prithivi Narayan Shah of Nepal instructions of Statehood, 1774 AD, Nuwakot Darbar,Nepal.
The first document on statehood and nation making, a basis for the Shah dynasty and modern Nepal! As Nepal enters the Constitution writing process, federalism and much else a highly needed reading as written by the King and translated by Stiller.

An overview of the history of constitutionalism in India before the promulgation of the Indian constitution of 1950. It treats the  Constitution as a set of interactions between constitutional texts, constitutional aspirations and the quotidian practice of constitutional law. The paper will open with a critical reading of the various texts (charters and legislations) that emanated from above and established the architecture of power in colonial India from 1600 to 1948. The second section will provide an overview of the various attempts by Indian groups to draw up constitutions or articulate claims against the state. Finally, the third section will look at constitutional practice examining legal strategies and judicial review in colonial India.

Written from a Tai/Shan perspective, the intricate and often unsettled realities that existed in the Shan States from early times up to the military coup in 1962 are described in a comprehensive overview of the stresses and strains that the Shan princes endured from early periods of monarchs and wars, under British rule and Japanese occupation, and Independence and Bamar military regime. Part One covers chronological events relating them to the rulers, the antagonists, and the people and the continuing conflict in the Shan State. Part Two deals with the 34 Tai/Shan rulers, describing their histories, lives, and work. Included are photographs and family trees of the princes, revealing a span of Shan history, before being lost in the mists of time. The past is explained in order that the present political situations may be understood and resolved amicably between the Bamar government, the Tatmadaw, and the ethnic nationalities

This contribution, in answer to the question posed in this collection 'right-wing nationalism, populism, and religion: what are the connections and why?', attempts to account for the development of Hindu nationalism in India as articulated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) under Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Hindu nationalism represents a fusion of conservative right-wing nationalism and religion, which has proved highly successful at the ballot box. It aims at the establishment of a Hindu Rashtra or state. Central to Hindu nationalism is the idea of Hindutva, which interpellates all Indians as belonging to a Hindu civilisation based on a common pan-Indian Hindu national identity. Muslims occupy the position of a 'constitutive outside' enabling the construction of a Hindu Rashtra; they remain 'enemies' to be either excluded or assimilated to a Hindu national culture. Consequently, they remain targets of government legislation. This will be illustrated with reference to the recent abrogation of Article 370 in Kashmir, the building of a temple to the Hindu God Ram in Ayodhya, the Citizen Amendment Act, and the government of India's responses to COVID-19. India under Modi, it concludes, is on the way to becoming a Hindu Rashtra.

Following recent debates between Vivek Chibber and leading postcolonial theorists, I probe into what is missing in these exchanges. I focus on the figure of the 'tribal' in modern India in Ranajit Guha's Elementary Aspects of Peasant Insurgency in Colonial India and Alpa Shah's In the Shadows of the State, both of which claim to offer emic perspectives on subaltern politics and history.

Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar trained as a Barrister in London and returned to India with the intention of starting a legal practice. While this fact is frequently alluded to, little is known or studied about his experience as a practising lawyer.  Dr. Ambedkar’s relationship with the law has been studied through his interventions as a legislator, as a representative before Commissions, as Law Minister and most famously as the Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Indian Constitution.
            The absence of material on his legal practice is explained in two ways, scholars either content that because of caste discrimination he wasn’t able to build a sustainable legal practice in the way that some of his contemporaries were; or that since almost all the leaders of the Indian national movement were lawyers, the legal training and practice of individuals offers no special insight.
            This chapter challenges both contentions by reconstructing Dr. Ambedkar’s legal career before the courts of Bombay presidency through newspaper articles, memoirs and legal reports. It is precisely because Dr. Ambedkar did not build up a commercial practice like his Gandhi and Jinnah (who were able to draw upon their caste networks for wealthy business cases), he was able to emerge as one of India’s most prolific political and civil rights lawyers. Covering a period of 20 years, this paper highlights Dr. Ambedkar’s defense of left wing and trade union leaders in criminal cases; the defense of the right to strike, the defense of free speech and of attempts to silence dalit and modernist writers through the use defamation, the defense of ordinary Indians arrested for their participation in Satyagraha and finally his engagement in the defense of indigent persons who were given the death penalty. Finally, the paper turns to his engagement with constitutional cases in the 1950 and the tension between the lawyer and the constitution maker. His cases are carefully chosen and reveal his conception of how law can be used to achieve certain political ends.
            Secondly, I argue that Dr. Ambedkar’s legal career is distinctly different from that of his contemporaries. Political life in Political life in India from the late 19th century till independence was dominated by men who had trained and practiced as lawyers. The domination by legal professionals has been used as a shorthand  for class to attribute the bourgeoisie character of mass politics in India. Lawyers are not an undifferentiated mass, and have very different experiences as legal professional. For Dr. Ambedkar, being a lawyer involved two acts of representation, that of his client but also his community before a largely hostile profession. Drawing on recent work on early African American and women lawyers, this paper argues that Dr. Ambedkar’s legal career offers an insight into the relationship between his professional identity, political ideals and caste identity.

Submitted for a MA in Conflict Security and Development, University of Exeter, August 2015.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT-BD), which has recently sentenced several prominent Islamist politicians for their ‘collaboration’ in crimes committed by the Pakistani military during the 1971 war for independence, is a controversial process. Supporters applaud its efforts to achieve justice obstructed for several decades, whilst its opponents denounce its political motivation.  This dissertation primarily seeks to understand whether ICT-BD can be understood as an attempt to complete a process of justice for 1971 or a politically motivated attack on opponents of the government. In doing so it provides an assessment of ICT-BD which situates it within a complex historical and political context and recognises the nature and importance of conflict legacy in Bangladesh. It attempts to explain and reconcile international and local opinions and assessments that frequently diverge, ultimately concluding that ‘justice’ and ‘politics’ are inexorably intertwined over this issue. 
The prosecution of historic war crimes is undoubtedly a worthy exercise, which Bangladesh has every right to conduct in a domestic framework. But ICT-BD certainly has political utility for the ruling party, if not overt political motivation. Unfortunately the adoption of 1970s legislation has limited the Tribunal’s scope to the defeated side in the conflict.  This was always a likely outcome given that public demand for justice has always been focused upon Islamist figures, who are largely seen as having been unjustly ‘rehabilitated’, and the trials enjoy majority approval amongst Bangladeshis. The Tribunal claims to incorporate ‘international law’, yet the government’s desire to use death sentences has precluded all international involvement. It undeniably falls short of ‘international standards’, and has attracted justified criticism from international commentators and organisations. But, international coverage has lacked balance, and has inadequately engaged with the full historical context and political realities of the Bangladeshi post-conflict scenario.

Perhaps nowhere in India is contemporary politics and visions of 'the political' as diverse, animated, uncontainable, and poorly understood as in Northeast India. Vernacular Politics in Northeast India offers penetrating accounts into what guides and animates Northeast India's spirited political sphere, including the categories and values through which its peoples conceive of their 'political' lives. Fourteen essays and an Afterword by anthropologists, political scientists, historians, and geographers think their way afresh into the region's political life and sense. Collectively they show how different communities, instead of adjusting themselves to modern democratic ideals, adjust democracy to themselves, how ethnicity has become a politically pregnant expression of local identities, and how indigeneity assume a life of its own as it is taken on, articulated, reworked, and fought over by peoples.

India and China, two eminent powers of Asia present unique chemistry of conflictual and cooperative relationship. The war of 1962, which led to 15 years of diplomatic stalemate and the longstanding territorial conflict on the Himalayan border, is the hallmark of Sino-Indian bilateral relations. Nevertheless, since the revival of political relations by 1978, till the present state of affairs, frequent high-level exchange of visits, and steadfastness in all areas of cooperation show that both countries are focusing more on commonality and less on dissonance at bilateral level. However, at the regional level particularly in strategic calculus of South Asia, the proclamation of Sino-Indian relations—despite their commitments to cooperate and bring mutual consensus—are different from actions. Looking at Sino-Indian relations under the realm of " Greater South Asia " and Indian Ocean, the intentions and statements of China and India are also poles apart. Therefore, while keeping in view the unprecedented changes in the strategic calculus of Sino-Indian relations and South Asian Strategic Triangle of Sino-India-Pakistan, there are vast implications for Pakistan. Owing to growing misunderstanding between Pakistan-India relations on the one hand and Pakistan-China deepening relations particularly after the landmark China-Pakistan Economic Corridor agreement on the other hand, Indian attitude seems catastrophic in the future regional sustainable peaceful environment. Hence, this study extensively evaluates Sino-Indian bilateral relations regarding its historical and contemporary developments. Simultaneously, the paper presents a debate on the implications Pakistan in the perspective of South Asian Strategic Triangle of Sino-India-Pakistan. It concludes that all three players will have to work jointly for the stable mutually beneficial relationship and the regional development.

Based on an analysis of the changing trajectory of Jama`at-e Islami in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, I critically examine Breman’s and Rushdies’s line of thought also manifest in dominant academic writings. Demonstrating the folly, even poverty, of such a framework, I aim to offer  possibly a fresh understanding of Islamism in south Asia. Central to my argument is that we begin to study the transformative moments in Islamism for it marks a shift from discourse to the profoundness of praxis. Here I am persuaded by Trouillot’s observation that the Haitian revolution “thought itself out politically and philosophically as it was taking place,” in a context where “discourse always lagged behind practice.” Critical to this is the process of transformation. Since it is a process, Islamism is not a frozen entity immutably locked into a dead end. In showing this dynamism, my aim is to destabilize the premise that while liberalism is open to self-examination, thinkers like Mawdudi and their followers are not. My contention is to the contrary. It seems that Muslims and Islamists such as Ghannouchi (1998) have reexamined many of their assumptions; it is liberals like the French secularist, notably the philosopher
Blandine Kriegel (Foucault’s associate, advisor to Jacques Chirac, and the chair of the High Integration Council), and Indian academics like Zoya Hasan who are obstinate on
not reexamining theirs. Th is obstinacy has only been accentuated with the ascendance of the post-9/11 paradigm I have called “securitization” of Islam.

This article presents an ethnography of modern democracy by examining the particularistic substance and conceptions of "politics" and "the political" in the small, hilly, and tribal state of Nagaland in India's Northeast. Situating contemporary political practices in both the vernacular and the ethnographic longue durée enables us to reflect critically on the analytical usability of universalistic and normative canons and creeds of (liberal) democracy. To discuss this, and more, I explore the historical and cultural inferences, inner-logic, and intricacies that guided two crucial episodes that ensued in the run up to the Polling Day of Nagaland's 2013 State Elections in a Chakhesang Naga village I shall call Phugwumi: First, the villagers' (successful) attempt to protect the village electoral list from the deletion of "bogus votes" initiated by the government. Second, the villagers' (unsuccessful) attempt to agree on a "village consensus candidate. " The analysis of these events leads me to critique preconceived definitions of "normative democracy" (Nugent 2008) and instead argue toward a critical anthropological appreciation of modern democracy's polythetic (Needham 1975) and multivalent character.

In this paper - published in Klaus Segbers ed. The Making of Global City Regions: Johannesburg, Mumbai/ Bombay, São Paulo, and Shanghai (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007) - Ranjit Hoskote argues that the western-Indian coastal metropolis of Bombay/ Mumbai has been afflicted by an "ideological polarisation between a democratic politics of inclusion and a demagogic politics of exclusion" at least since the early 1990s. I demonstrate, "there is no single dominant image of the city, no broadly shared civic vision, no common discourse regarding policy objectives, no agreement on the greatest common good of the metropolis. What prevails, in place of such consensual unities, is a kaleidoscopic circle of images in a state of perpetual contestation, varying from citizen to citizen and community to community, and determined by such factors as language, religion, ethnicity, locality of habitation, and economic and cultural capital." As a result, the city's public sphere is marked by a crisis of "communicative disengagement" among the city's various groups and of "competitive populism" among its political actors. Political factors including the violence that followed the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992 and the transition from an industrial to a postindustrial economy have exacerbated existing tensions and provoked new ones, leading to the disenfranchisement of some groups and a mismanagement of social relationships. Written against the backdrop of the first decade of India's economic 'liberalisation', this paper is an extended reflection on Bombay/ Mumbai's claim to being a global city and its actual capacity to negotiate the pressures of globalisation.

The local is a microcosm of the global. What is unacceptable globally could also be unacceptable locally. Regimes that support good economics and bad politics, silencing democratic institutions with a high growth compensation, will have no problem with the bad politics of Vladimir Putin of invading Ukraine or Crimea as they have no stake in good politics whether it is local, regional or global. This makes the allegedly oppressed major opposition party in Bangladesh a natural ally of those who are pursuing a neoliberal strategy of good democratic governance, fair elections, free press, fiscal transparency and a vibrant civil society.

The democratic credentials and institutions of Pakistan are explained as weak
because of the division within society between modern secular and traditional
religious positions. Today, the society of Pakistan faces the issue of religious
extremism. While attempting to identify the causes of violent extremism and the
socio-economic conditions, class divisions, and societal inequalities that direct
Pakistanis toward extremism and militancy, this article argues that education is the
most important solution that will save Pakistani society from the ills of extremism

This article has attempted to explain why the military has remained a powerful political institution/force in Pakistan. Its purpose was to test a hypothesis that posited that the colonial authority structure and the 1947 partition-oriented structural dynamics provided an important structural construct in explaining politics and the military in post-colonial Pakistan. To explain and analyse the problem, the study used books, journals, newspapers and government documents for quantitative/ explanatory analysis. The analysis has focused on the military in the colonial authority structure in which the former, along with the civil bureaucracy and the landed-feudal class, formed an alliance to pursue politico-economic interests in British India. The article has also explained and analysed the partitionoriented structural dynamics in terms of territory (Kashmir) and population (Indian refugees). The findings proved that these ‘structural dynamics’ have affected politics and the military in Pakistan. The theoretical framework in terms of ‘praetorian oligarchy’ has been applied to structurally explain colonial politics as well as politics and the military in Pakistan. The study treated Pakistan as a praetorian state which structurally inherited the pre-partition ‘praetorian oligarchy’. This praetorian oligarchy constructed ‘Hindu India’ as the enemy to pursue politico-economic interests. The military, a part of praetorian oligarchy, emerged from this as a powerful political actor due to its coercive power. It has sought political power to pursue economic objectives independently.

In this article, the authors conduct a comparative review of the
strategic imperatives driving Sino-Indian policy on Afghanistan in
the post-2014 scenario. The article argues that divergent strategic
imperatives make cooperation difficult and/or unlikely. This analysis
is based on a broader consideration of both contemporary
history and geopolitical dynamics shaping the foreign policy considerations
of these two countries, and an assessment of the
impact of ongoing bi-lateral and regional aspirations. The authors
begin by highlighting the salient dynamics that have historically
characterized and driven Indian and Chinese foreign policy in
general and on Afghanistan. They find that Afghanistan, although
not a primary focus of either state’s foreign or security policy,
historically, is increasing in importance for both; India and China
compete on a range of economic and security issues.

Kashmir as a Borderland: The Politics of Space and Belonging across the Line of Control examines the Kashmir dispute from both sides of the Line of Control (LoC) and within the theoretical frame of border studies. It draws on the experiences of those living in these territories such as divided families, traders, cultural and social activists. Kashmir is a borderland, that is, a context for spatial transformations, where the resulting interactions can be read as a process of ‘becoming’ rather than of ‘being’. The analysis of this borderland shows how the conflict is manifested in territory, in specific locations with a geopolitical meaning, evidencing the discrepancy between ‘representation’ and the ‘living’. The author puts forward the concept of belonging as a useful category for investigating more inclusive political spaces.

Compared to the bulky literature on caste and democracy, we still
know little about the form and functioning of democratic politics
amongst tribes. This is a serious lacuna, one which, at the level
of sociology, impedes the kind of careful comparison that has
long proven fruitful to capture the inner logic and intricacies
of social life. If caste is deemed central to any understanding of
contemporary Indian politics, what about those states and constituencies in which tribes preponderate numerically?

NOVEMBER 26; THE INDIAN CONSTITUTION DAY
HOW RSS DENIGRATED INDIAN CONSTITUTION: A PEEP INTO ITS ARCHIVES
The Constituent Assembly of India finalized the Constitution of India on November 26, 1949 which is celebrated as the CONSTITUTION DAY. This Constitution promised new born Indian Republic a polity based on democracy, justice, egalitarianism and rule of law. However, RSS was greatly annoyed. Four days after the historic event of approval of it, the RSS English Organiser in an editorial on November 30, 1949, complained:
“But in our Constitution there is no mention of the unique constitutional development in ancient Bharat. Manu’s Laws were written long before Lycurgus of Sparta or Solon of Persia. To this day his laws as enunciated in the Manusmriti excite the admiration of the world and elicit spontaneous obedience and conformity. But to our constitutional pundits that means nothing.”
READ THE WHOLE ARTICLE...
LINKS:
https://sabrangindia.in/article/how-rss-denigrated-constitution 
https://www.hastakshepnews.com/november-26-the-indian-constitution-day-how-rss-denigrated-it/
https://muslimmirror.com/eng/constitution-day-how-rss-denigrated-it-a-peep-into-its-archives/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=constitution-day-how-rss-denigrated-it-a-peep-into-its-archives

The paper examines Bangladesh's democratic performances on key democratic consolidation indicators based on a framework of democratic consolidation theories. Using various data sources and employing descriptive analyses, the paper evaluates the performances of both state and non-state institutions critical to democratic consolidation.

Before being published in Asia Maior, all articles, whether commissioned or unsolicited, after being first evaluated by the Journal's editors, are then submitted to a double-blind peer review involving up to three anonymous referees. Coherently with the double-blind peer review process, Asia Maior does not make public the name of the reviewers. However, the reviewers' names-and, if need be, the whole correspondence between the journal's editors and the reviewer/s-can be disclosed to interested institutions, upon a formal request made directly to the Editor in Chief of the journal. Articles meant for publication should be sent to Michelguglielmo Torri (

The current issue of the journal Contemporary South Asia (Volume 30, No., 2, 2022) features an interdisciplinary forum on the book In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast (Stanford University Press, 2020). The forum consists of six essays: commentaries on the book by Amit R. Baishya, Sean M. Dowdy, Soibam Haripriya, Bengt G. Karlsson, Alf Gunvald Nilsen and the author’s response.

This paper, published in The Diplomat in February 2015, argues that an effective Act East Policy for India must target an overhaul of the political economy of development in the Indian state of Manipur. It draws upon field research in Imphal conducted in January 2015.

(Please click the link directly to read!)

This book focuses on Islamism as a political ideology by taking up the case of Jamaat-e-Islami in contemporary India and Bangladesh. It probes at whether Islamism can articulate a politics of alternative in a world marked by capitalist globalization and neoliberal consensus; what happens to the promise and goal of Islamism in providing an alternative to capitalism after the failure of twentieth-century socialism; and if a religious ideology like Islamism can represent a politics of social transformation, or can it only limit itself as a peculiar politics of resistance and critique to neoliberal capitalism. This book addresses how, in a contemporary globalized world, Islamists construct an antagonistic frontier and try to mobilize people behind the political project of Islamism. It deals with the Islamist critique of neoliberal economic policies and ‘western cultural globalization’. Further, it analyzes why Islamists are opposed to such issues as atheism, blasphemy and sexual freedom. Finally, it traces the contemporary crisis of Islamist populism in providing an alternative to neoliberalism.

Contents
List of Tables
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Islamism(s) of Academics and Islamists
Chapter 1: Islamism and Ideology: Philosophical Issues and Analytical Categories
Chapter 2: Islamism in Neoliberal India
Chapter 3: Ideological Articulations of Jamaat-e-Islami Hind
Chapter 4: Islamism in a Muslim Majority Context: The Case of Bangladesh
Chapter 5: The Crisis of Islamist Populism of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami
Chapter 6: Islamism in Contemporary India and Bangladesh: Comparative Overview of the Politics of Alternative

Appendix
Bibliography
Index
About the Author

“VIJIGISHU 2021” a 3-day International e-Conference on the theme "Delineating Global Power Dynamics in Asia Pacific" being organised by Amity Institute of International Studies in collaboration with Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and Engagement,  scheduled from 22-24 September 2021.

This chapter looks at an essential feature of West Bengal politics, which is the limited influence of big national parties (the Congress and the BJP) in the state. Further, the chapter asks whether there is any possibility of increasing the support of those parties among the electorate of West Bengal especially after 2014 parliament and 2016 assembly elections. It attempts to answer the question mentioned above by analysing the broad political trends in the state in the last four decades.

Islamist extremism in Bangladesh emerged as a response to authoritarian populism and in the absence of a credible anti-establishment left-wing political project to articulate an alternative agenda to the existing status quo. Islamist extremists represent a politics of revenge and hatred with no clear objective to uplift the socio-economic conditions and livelihood prospects of the people.

Political violence is everywhere. But how does it emerge and what can be done about it? This book addresses the diversity of violence in South Asia, South East Asia and Western Europe. It examines the various forms of ideological backgrounds, structural conditions, relations and aims of non-state actors who are involved in violence in these regions and certain countries. Thereby, this book presents a similar diversity of theoretical and disciplinary approaches towards explaining the same phenomenon: violence. The rationale behind this collection of approaches and case studies is to identify communalities on the one hand, and to counter simple, unidimensional explanations of why non-state actors resort to violence on the other. Finally, it provides policy recommendations on how to counter violence. With contributions by Greg Barton, D. Suba Chandran, Aurel Croissant, Rohan Gunaratna, Kevin McDonald, Subrata K. Mitra, Khuram Iqbal, Serina Rahman, La Toya Waha and Christian Echle

This special issue seeks to rethink "resistance" as a critical social science concept in the light of a range of critiques since the 1980s. The five articles in this issue draw their empirical materials from contemporary India, but their arguments have significant implications for those working on other parts of Asia and the world. The articles acknowledge the inherent ambiguities and ambivalences of subaltern resistance in the face of hegemonic social formations, yet, shorn of exoticising and homogenising tendencies, resistance can be reconceptualised as the negotiation rather than negation of social power. Such a reconceptualisation is useful to study a wide range of contentious politics from foot-dragging through protests to social revolutions under a single analytic umbrella. Resistance, in this sense, ought to be recognised as a vital part of a critical realist ontology of society, which helps us understand and critique existing structures of social domination in order to pursue emancipatory possibilities via the generation of social scientific knowledge.

Reacting to an increasingly assertive China, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has looked to expand his country’s influence in the Indo-Pacific, becoming the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit the island nation in 24 years. Whatever these developments could mean for the future of Japanese-Sri Lankan relations, this burgeoning bilateral relationship is certain to have ramifications for the future of the Indo-Pacific.

There may also be darker clouds ahead for the US in Asia. The region that has often been suspicious of Chinese expansionism and the underlying motives and impact of the BRI as well as its territorial claims to the South China Sea and it once welcomed the prospect, in some quarters, of President Obama’s declared pivot back to Asia (something Biden is purportedly trying to realise) that would help to balance out the PRC and offer Asian countries the opportunity to benefit from safe economic exposure to both. The Western response to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine did raise some sympathy for Ukrainians but, as it continued and was ramped up very quickly, Southeast Asians, such as the Burmese living under the heel of the military in Myanmar find the imbalance in Western concern disheartening. Social media and opinion pieces by both those in the West and in Asia have decried the underlying racism that makes Ukrainian lives appear to seem, to the West, more valuable than those of Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, where responses are often late, half-hearted, and self-serving. The US in particular has been blamed for moral hypocrisy as well, given its numerous invasions and military strikes in the Middle East in the last two decades and a kind of determined unilateralism where the US is the sole arbiter of global right and wrong. It may be that Putin, like Hitler, will fail miserably in the end. Nevertheless, in the long run, Putin, again like Hitler, will have been responsible for the emergence of a new geopolitical order on a global scale in which the US place in Asia is less welcome than it once was.

David Lewis and Willem van Schendel, 'Rethinking the Bangladesh State,' Contributions to Indian Sociology, 54:2 (2020), 306–323.

The study of the Bangladesh state continues to be a path less travelled for scholars of South Asia. The articles in this special issue aim to offer fresh perspectives based on recent ethnographic work on a variety of aspects of the state by new young national and international scholars. Overall, there is a pressing need to pay closer attention to the state and to think about it in new ways, and in this brief concluding article, we offer some thoughts on where we are and some pointers towards where we may need to go. While there are many strengths to the small quantity of literature that exists on this theme, there are also some important limitations.

Foreign policy towards Russian Federation. Islamic Republic of Pakistan has been considered major  ally of the United States since its emergence as an independent state 14 August 1947. It  participated in pro- Western Alliances as SEATO and CENTO. Peshawar Air Base was once used as an  airfield for US recon- aissance flights over the USSR. Western part of Pakistan plaid significant  role as a backstage of US- supported struggle of the Afghans against the Soviet aggression in 1979.  But the relations had deteriorated because of Pakistan’s nuclear program. Pakistan once again  became important US ally after 9/11. But the situation has changed dramatically when the USA  decided to sign an agreement on strategic nuclear partnership with India in 2009. New opportunities  occurred when Russia invaded Ukraine and had captured Crimea in 2014. The USA and EU imposed  economic sanctions on Russia. Such new cir- cumstances as well as cooling of US-Pakistan relations  after killing of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil in 2011 pushed Moscow and Islamabad in to  cooperation. The Author is analyzing present events and status of cooperation and future  perspectives. South Asia is one of the most dangerous regions of the World because both India and  Pakistan possess nuclear weapons. So involvement of both or just one of them in to geopolitical  conflict will change balance of power, especially if we concern possible conflict with China over South Asia Sea.

In this chapter I propose a theory of political deification based on a case study of the West Bengal chief minister. The elaborate network of power and political interest among political actors, the patrons of the festival today, leads to the deification of the minister in various forms. However, just as there is an unrestrainable process of entwining the image of the goddess and that of the minister, simultaneously, there exists an undeniable process of disavowals and dissociations. I show what these disavowals are and why they are necessary. No matter how close the icons of Durgā and Mamata Banerjee may come to each other; even if they are infinitely repeated and juxtaposed on every street corner, they never truly become indistinguishable in the contemporary Durgā Pūjā of Kolkata. I use emic political discourse to make a larger argument about secularisation and Caste Hindu Bengali religiosity.

India is a refugee receiving country in South Asia. Refugee groups that have sought asylum in India include Tibetans, the Tamil from Sri Lanka, Partition refugees from erstwhile East and West Pakistan, the Chakmas from Bangladesh, Bhutanese refugees from Nepal, Afghans, Rohingya and other refugees from Myanmar and refugees from Somalia, DRC and Sudan. In spite of having such a substantive asylum seeking and refugee population, India is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention 1 or the 1967 Protocol 2. Neither has any domestic legislation in India been passed to protect refugees. The fate of individual refugees in India is essentially determined by protections that are made available under the Indian Constitution. The question often raised is why India, like several other nations in South Asia, has not ratified the 1951 Refugee Convention. This article analyzes a number of scholastic arguments that have been made to explain India's refusal to accede to the Convention, and examines the existing legal setup for refugees in India in order to arrive at an understanding of the context of non-accession. This opinion paper concludes that India will likely never be party to the Convention despite hosting numerous refugees on its soil, and argues that uniform domestic protection legislation must be enacted.

From the back cover:
‘By insisting that what we call “patronage” is above all a moral idiom, and by rejecting arguments that would prefer to confine patronage to the theoretical dustbin referred to as “tradition”, this brilliant volume will transform the study of South Asian politics. It combines a stellar assembly of researchers and imaginatively analysed case studies, and will provoke exciting debates about the past, present and future of democracy - both in South Asia itself, and far beyond.’
Jonathan Spencer, Professor of the Anthropology of South Asia
University of Edinburgh

‘It is remarkable how much the historical course in India is guided rather by institutional memories and their persisting structural paradigms. Testifying to this reproduction of the past in modern political garb, essay after essay of this fine work offers a nuanced, anthropological sense of how cultural order is revealed by historical change, even as the change manifests a historical order.’
Marshall Sahlins, Charles F. Grey Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
The University of Chicago

'Even those of us who see the importance of patronage waning will find an abundance of crucial insights in these subtle, deeply learned analyses.'
James Manor, Professor of Commonwealth Studies
University of London

‘This excellent book demonstrates the importance of maintaining a focus on morality as it intersects with political and economic process ... Drawing on rich empirical case material, it is a refreshing and revitalizing “return” to the category of patronage that will be valuable to both regional specialists and those with a broader interest in global political processes.’
Jon P Mitchell, Reader in Anthropology, Director of Doctoral Studies for Global Studies
University of Sussex

The modern state rests on a collective delusion. It requires that most of its residents agree that the arbitrarily drawn borders of the state are logical and permanent, and that the population living within those borders forms a single political community. Yet, one of the most persistent features of the past 200 years of history has been the resistance to this political fiction. The homogenizing idea of the nation-state continues to be challenged by multinational reality. ` This course investigates central aspects of this tension. It starts with exploring the link between nationhood and legitimacy of modern statehood, and examines the issue of ethnic and national diversity as they relate to political legitimacy. It then shifts to the explanations for successful and unsuccessful homogenization of national identities within states. The second half of the course examines the various aspects of the politics of multinational statehood, from the management of difference through federalism and consociationalism, to mobilization for secession and secessionist outcomes. We will explore both successful and unsuccessful secessions, including those pursued through violent and non-violent means (civil wars and referenda). The course also addresses domestic and international, as well as political and legal aspects of the practice of creation of new states. Course materials combine theoretical and conceptual readings with case studies from around the world.