What kinds of civic ties between different ethnic communities can contain, or even prevent, ethnic violence? This book draws on new research on Hindu-Muslim conflict in India to address this important question. Ashutosh Varshney examines three pairs of Indian cities-one city in each pair with a history of communal violence, the other with a history of relative communal harmony-to discern why violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs in some situations but not others. His findings will b...

First Published in 1993. This title sets out to spark debate and learn from the urban bias theory. The author suggests that recent political economy research suggests that it is time to redefine the problem of urban bias. Viewed as a collective engagement with the urban bias theory, this volume presents the new research along with the responses of Bates and Lipton. These studies do not add up to an alternative theory of why the state behaves the way it does towards the countryside. They do...

This lively collection of essays by Ashutosh Varshney analyses the deepening of Indian democracy since 1947 and the challenges this has created. It examines concerns ranging from federalism and Hindu nationalism to caste conflict and civil society, the north–south economic divide, and politics of economic reforms. Accompanied by a substantial overview tracing the forging and consolidation of India’s improbable democracy, the book, full of original insights, portrays the successes and failu...

Often dismissed as the rumblings of "the street," popular politics is where political modernity is being formed today, according to Partha Chatterjee. The rise of mass politics all over the world in the twentieth century led to the development of new techniques of governing population groups. On the one hand, the idea of popular sovereignty has gained wide acceptance. On the other hand, the proliferation of security and welfare technologies has created modern governmental bodies that admin...

The book provides a detailed historically-based analysis of the origin, evolution and potential resolution of the civil conflict in Sri Lanka over the struggle to establish a separate state in its Northern and Eastern provinces. This conflict between the Sri Lankan government and the secessionist LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) is one of the world’s most intractable contemporary armed struggles. The internationally banned LTTE is considered the prototype of modern terrorism. It is ...

The merchant world represents a relatively neglected area in South Asian history. Merchants were important actors in the economic, political, social, and cultural life of India, and deserve more attention than they have been given. This book therefore bridges a gap by bringing together a number of issues which deal with the Indian mercantile world in colonial India, and its relationship with politics and society. Three major themes are taken up: the relationship between the business world and...

Social movements are change-orientated political formations, often using tactics such as direct action, with loose and informal organizational structures. They are organized around ideas which give the individuals who adhere to the movement new forms of social and political identity. The success of the feminist movement thus does not depend just on various forms of political action, but also on the way in which the ideas associated with the movement led women, and ultimately men, to rethin...

Indians wryly admit that ‘India grows at night’. But that is only half the saying, the full expression is: ‘India grows at night… when the government sleeps’, suggesting that the nation may be rising despite the state. India’s is a tale of private success and public failure. Prosperity is, indeed, spreading across the country even as governance failure pervades public life. But how could a nation become one of the world’s fastest-growing economies when it’s governed by a weak, ineffective sta...

Sunil Khilnani’s exciting book addresses the paradoxes and ironies that have surrounded the project of inventing India—a project that has brought Indians considerable political freedom and carried their enormous democracy to the verge of being Asia’s greatest free state but that has also left many of them in poverty and that is now threatened by divisive religious nationalism. Khilnani’s superb historical analysis conveys modern India’s energy, fluidity, and unpredictability—in its democracy ...

This book moves the discussion of affirmative action beyond the United States to other countries that have had similar policies, often for a longer time than Americans have. It also moves the discussion beyond the theories, principles, and laws that have been so often debated to the actual empirical consequences of affirmative action in the United States and in India, Nigeria, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, and other countries. Both common patterns and national differences are examined. Much of what...

As the leading book in its field, Religion and Ethnicity in Canada has been embraced by scholars, teachers, students, and policy makers as a breakthrough study of Canadian religio-ethnic diversity and its impact on multiculturalism. A team of established scholars looks at the relationships between religious and ethnic identity in Canada's six largest minority religious communities: Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Jews, Muslims and practitioners of Chinese religion. The chapters also hig...

The United States and China are the two most important states in the international system and are crucial to the evolution of global order. Both recognize each other as vital players in a range of issues of global significance, including the use of force, macroeconomic policy, nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, climate change and financial regulation. In this book, Rosemary Foot and Andrew Walter, both experts in the fields of international relations and the East Asian region, explore th...