Search

Between 2009 and 2014, Thirumavalavan, the leader of the largest Dalit party in Tamil Nadu, served as an MP in Delhi. This paper draws on research with the Viduthalai Chiruthaigal Katchi (VCK or Liberation Panther Party) to raise a number of key questions about representation and democracy in a multi-level federal system. Although they are a minor party, their experience of national politics offers insights into the workings of party systems in India. The paper considers the extent to which they are constrained by alliance partners and political rules-of-the-game. It then considers the question of representation, and asks what the VCK managed to achieve in Thirumavalavan's constituency of Chidambaram and the extent to which they could raise issues at the national level both through formal and disruptive means. Finally, the paper reflects on the advantages and disadvantages for a small party of having a foothold in the Centre and draws out the lessons of the VCK's experience for our understanding of Indian politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the 'expanded state' in post-liberalisation India within the context of official responses to the Maoist insurgency in rural central and eastern India. I analyse a scheme called the Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellowship, which was launched as part of the central government's attempt to wean ordinary men and women away from Maoist insurgents through rural development. Under this scheme, young women and men are appointed to assist state officials in implementing rural development programmes in districts classified as 'Left-Wing Extremist'. What does the institution and practice of this fellowship tell us about the state in India today in the context of counterinsurgency and beyond? I address this question on the basis of ethnographic fieldwork in an erstwhile Maoist district in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. By closely shadowing the everyday work of one Prime Minister's Rural Development Fellow (PMRDF), I show how the PMRDF is located outside the state, and yet constitutes the state. By focussing on the role of the PMRDF, I reveal one of the many new configurations of the state that are emerging in India today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 Lok Sabha election marks a watershed for Indian politics. The elections in the state of Assam have been marked by interethnic violence, fuelled by issues of indigeneity and ‘illegal’ migration. This paper primarily discusses the electoral result from the Kokrajhar constituency in lower Assam, the heart of Bodo politics and a hotbed for ethnic conflict. Two decades of armed struggle resulted in concessions granted to the Bodos, the largest plains tribe in Assam, in the form of a territorial council, under the Sixth Schedule of the Indian constitution. In the 2014 election, for the first time in the history of the constituency, a non-Bodo candidate won, with an impressive 51% of the vote share. The electoral outcome may be seen as a further polarization of the existing ethnic cleavage between Bodos and non-Bodos in the region. Using the theory of outbidding, it will be shown that the victory of a non-Bodo in the constituency may be seen as an outcome of a history of inter-group conflict in the region as well as intra-group rivalry among various factions of the Bodo leadership. Further, this case also illustrates that the propensity of the outbidding effect to foment inter-ethnic violence is greater in contexts where political institutions (in this case autonomous/territorial councils) encourage a singular axis of identity as a basis of mobilization. In conclusion, the paper discusses the implications of this election result for the politics of ‘ethnic homeland’ in Assam. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the deployment and symbolic appropriation of popular history and nationalist iconography within the campaigns and discourse of Hindu nationalist organisations in India. It examines how Hindu nationalists have deployed these themes over several decades in the east Indian state of West Bengal. This paper notes that the Hindu nationalist attempt to re-construct popular history and regional identity was contested. Specifically, it considers the political response of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the pre-eminent leftist party in India, within the public sphere at a national and regional level. In so doing, the paper attempts to delineate the varied ways in which the Hindu nationalist deployment of iconic figures from the past are simultaneously articulated and, paradoxically, anomalous, to the regional specificity of political culture and the social construction of historical memory and identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did India not go to Sri Lanka's rescue in May 2000 when the island's leadership begged it to intervene to save nearly 40,000 soldiers who were close to being captured by the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LITE)? India's disinclination to get involved, even as Pakistan, China and Israel provided arms to Sri Lanka, raises the question of whether the country is still committed to the Indira Doctrine (which operates as India's equivalent of the United States' Monroe Doctrine in South Asia). This paper agrees that India remains fully committed to being the dominant regional power and a significant global power. It also argues that India will not hesitate to protect its national security interests. However, this paper suggests that domestic pressures, especially those emanating from Kashmir and the country's northeast, may have left India militarily overextended, especially during the late 1990s, and thereby prevented the country from flexing its military capabilities in the region as it did in the 1980s. Such a scenario not only hampers India's ability to operate as an efficient and dependable regional begemon, but also may have adverse ramifications for South Asia's smaller states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examinations of how the secular state deals with the threat posed by ‘nationalist-religious’ parties (as distinct from ‘religious-nationalist’ parties) has received little attention. Consequently, this paper focuses on the available strategies for dealing with relatively moderate nationalist-religious parties like the Refah Party in Turkey and the Bharatiya Janata Party in India. In particular, it examines two opposed approaches: that which seeks to exclude and isolate such parties, as in the case of Turkey; and that which adopts a policy of engagement, as in India. The paper then assesses the relative merits of these two strategies and concludes that the latter approach provides a more effective means of dealing with nationalist-religious parties, especially in democratic countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) made its national debut in 2014. Arvind Kejriwal, the National Convenor and a founding leader of the AAP, had a decisive impact on the character of the party. This paper reflects on the significance of Kejriwal's leadership in relation to the literature on party systems and political leadership. In 2014, he attempted to open up a new political cleavage and add a new party to the national party system. His entrepreneurial activity drew attention to the issues of corruption and governance. Kejriwal's political leadership is assessed in terms of his ability to set objectives for the party, his interaction with followers, his efforts to represent those followers and the development of party institutions. Kejriwal's performance as a party leader in 2014 was uneven. The outcome of the Lok Sabha elections exposed the geographical limits of Kejriwal's appeal even as he attempted to provide national leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines two simultaneous dynamics in contemporary India: the development of new urban spaces, and an intensification of Hindu nationalism (Hindutva). Examining the case of Noida (a township adjacent to Delhi), this article suggests that the entrepreneurial mode of urban development [Harvey 2006. Spaces of Global Capitalism. New York: Verso] has restructured local spaces, which in turn may give rise to rival attempts at group making, seeking to recreate exclusive identities out of choice and resentment to mobilise political action. Such rival attempts may enable Hindutva to entrench itself in local milieus through multiple modes, including the soft mode of 'neo-Hindutva'. Overall, the article outlines the dynamic association between new urban processes and exclusivist/nativist forms of politics in contemporary India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this piece, we argue that the electoral performance of the BJP, and the popularity of Narendra Modi, has significantly altered the dynamic of regional party politics in India. The BJP's undiluted power at the Centre has created the political context for greater centralization of power. This in turn has generated greater distinctions between regional and national politics. The popularity of Prime Minister Modi combined with his party's ideological project generates a deeply centralized national politics that can be easily distinguished from regional politics for the voter. This increasingly distinct form of national politics weakens the role of regional parties in national politics, both in electoral terms and in bargaining power, as regional parties rarely have well-defined, credible national policy platforms in India. However, it does, for the moment, appear to strengthen the electoral position of regional parties at the state level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city of Gorakhpur presents what may be a unique, and is certainly an unusual, configuration of religion and politics. The sitting MP from 1998 to 2017, Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk, had one of the safest seats in India and won five parliamentary elections in a row, a career that culminated in his appointment as the BJP Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh in 2017. Adityanath was both an effective constituency MP and the head of a thriving Math (Hindu monastic temple). Gorakhpur used to be famous for its lawless image and gang warfare. We seek to explain how politics in Gorakhpur have evolved through three distinct periods: (1) Congress hegemony and Hindu-Muslim harmony at the local level; (2) intensified caste competition and the rise of muscular politics; (3) the impact of new caste politics (with the rise of caste-based parties such as the SP and BSP), with the Math as the focus of Gorakhpur's ever-stronger Hindu-based political identity. The BJP's loss of the Gorakhpur seat in 2018, in a by-election consequent on Adityanath's elevation to Chief Minister of UP, may be interpreted as a (probably temporary) rejection of the BJP, but it does not represent a loss of influence by the Math. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The start of this century has seen Hindu nationalism emerge as a more dominant force than ever before. Hindutva is also evolving and shifting in new, surprising, and significant ways, requiring us to reassess and reframe prevailing understandings. This special issue seeks to identify and understand the ways in which Hindu nationalism increasingly permeates into new spaces: organisational, territorial, conceptual, rhetorical. It develops and expands on the idea of 'neo-Hindutva': 'idiosyncratic expressions of Hindu nationalism which operate outside [or on the peripheries] of the institutional and ideological framework of the Sangh Parivar' [Anderson, Edward. 2015. "'Neo-Hindutva': The Asia House M.F. Husain Campaign and the Mainstreaming of Hindu Nationalist Rhetoric in Britain." Contemporary South Asia 23 (1): 45-66]. The scope of the articles in the special issue reflects the diversity of contemporary Hindutva, which appears simultaneously brazen but concealed, nebulous and mainstreamed, militant yet normalised. They cover a wide range of topics and places in which we can locate new forms of Hindu nationalism: courts of law, the Northeast, the diaspora, Adivasi communities, and the internet. The special issue also includes an in-depth interview with Christophe Jaffrelot and a postscript by Deepa Reddy. These interventions, we hope, go some way to helping us make sense of contemporary Hindutva. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This in-depth interview with Professor Christophe Jaffrelot - one of the world's most distinguished, prolific, and versatile scholars of contemporary South Asia - focuses on his first area of expertise: Hindutva and the Hindu nationalist movement. In conversation with Dr Edward Anderson, Jaffrelot considers the development of Hindutva in India up to the present day, in particular scrutinising ways in which it has evolved over the past three decades. The discussion explores the diversity of Hindu nationalism and how the movement and ideology have spread beyond the purview of the RSS into various new spaces and normalised, vernacular expressions of 'neo-Hindutva'. The interview also reflects on recent tensions involving vigilantism and the banalisation of Islamophobia and anti-Dalit violence, and considers what Hindutva's current proliferation will mean for the future of Indian democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2009, the Government of India embarked on a mission to issue each of India’s over one billion residents a unique biometric identification number, Aadhaar (literally, ‘foundation’). An Aadhaar database would link the demographic and biometric information (iris scans, fingerprints, facial photograph) of residents to a 12-digit number. India currently commands the world’s largest biometric database. While Aadhaar does not guarantee citizenship, benefits, or services, its architects submit that its reliable, real-time identity verification infrastructure potentially allows for the targeted delivery of any good to its intended recipient. Aadhaar is fashioned as an ID concerned with a pristine bodily uniqueness untarnished by the social, political, or economic. Aadhaar frequently provokes the questions: Who is the recipient of Aadhaar and to what community does Aadhaar afford membership? Based on ethnographic fieldwork in India’s capital, New Delhi, this article examines how Aadhaar comes to inform ideas of identity and belonging held by its implementers, as well as the population it targets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes both representations of disability in popular media and the role of disabled workers in urban India and demonstrates how the category of disability becomes a form of non-threatening ‘feel good’ diversity. Unlike other axes of difference such as class, caste, gender, sexuality, and religion, India’s disability rights movement, corporations, and mainstream media represent disability as largely apolitical. Drawing on Nehruvian ideals about ‘unity in diversity’, this article discusses how disability functions as a means of imagining and creating unity in India. As a result of skillful manipulation that collapses and conflates nationalist and neoliberal projects, the success of disabled people is considered to be synonymous with the success of the nation. This essay thus examines how thinking, feeling, and representing through disability provides a new way of conceptualizing the nation and critically engages with ideas and ideals of ‘disability publics’. Disability is rendered into a representation and while tension exists between feeling good and feeling bad, the specter of a contentious disability politics is kept at bay. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article examines patterns of voter turnout and electoral competition in India's urban parliamentary constituencies. It places the 2014 Lok Sabha elections in historical context, drawing on constituency-level data from national elections since 1977 to explore broad changes and continuities in electoral competition, party structures, and voter turnout, with particular focus on comparisons between urban and rural India. The purpose of the article is descriptive, seeking to fill a gap in the literature on electoral competition in urban India. I find evidence that India's urban constituencies have recently, on average, been less competitive and participatory than non-urban constituencies, though this has not been a consistent trend since the mid-1970s. This article concludes with a brief outline for a research agenda on electoral politics in urban India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentary on Indian politics frequently uses the term populism narrowly to refer to short-term, electorally driven expenditure. However, the term is more insightfully used when referring to an ideological construct that celebrates the importance of the people as an undivided group. Politics in Tamil Nadu has had a strongly populist character since the 1960s with both the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and All-India Anna DMK (AIADMK) making appeals to the ‘people’ of the state. In the last decade, the DMK has adjusted its populist appeals to better connect with lower status groups, a constituency traditionally targeted by the AIADMK. The AIADMK re-worked its approach, using a technocratic populist discourse during its campaign to win the 2011 assembly elections, addressing concerns of higher status voters while still acknowledging its poorer supporters. Populist appeals have been adjusted to compensate for political weaknesses in the two governing parties. Economic and social changes since the late 1990s have created opportunities, as well as imperatives, for reworking populist appeals. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents the Indian electricity sector as a case study of the evasion of responsibility in public policy. India's electricity policy repeatedly fails to meet its own targets and is universally lambasted as inadequate. The state appears aware of many of the reasons for these failures, yet policies have consistently failed to make effective corrections. Part of the explanation for this institutional and policy stasis lies in the pervasive shirking of responsibility by actors throughout the electricity sector. The sector is analysed to explore the mechanisms through which responsibility is displaced, deflected or dissipated. These mechanisms include ‘agency’, ‘presentational’ and ‘policy’ strategies, which are both pre-emptively and reactively deployed. Using these strategies, responsibility is shifted through (1) institutional architecture which formally delegates power to other actors, especially exploiting the ambiguity in federalism, sectoralism, privatization and decentralization; (2) rhetorical displacement of blame onto other actors or ‘exogenous’ factors and (3) everyday policy procedures and bureaucratic practices designed to distance officials from decision making. By negating the requirement for institutional and analytical responsiveness, these evasions of responsibility perpetuate systemic failures and undermine the credibility of the Indian state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, we view India not as a unitary rational actor—the conventional conceptualisation in strategic studies—but rather as a liberal democratic polis composed of the three arenas of civil society, political society and the state. We seek answers to two related questions. The first pertains to the changes that are currently underway in Indian state and society. What is the probable impact of these internal dynamics upon strategic stability in the region? We restrict our analysis to the four most important factors in each of the three political arenas. The answer we arrive at is that the majority of factors making up the internal dynamics of contemporary India either enhance regional stability or, at best, have a mixed impact upon it. Our second concern is to discern the sources of strategic surprises from an Indian perspective. Are the stimuli for strategic surprises from the Indian perspective more internal or external? We conclude that the two India–Pakistan crises since overt nuclearisation in 1998—the 1999 Kargil Conflict and the 13 December 2001 terrorist attack on the Indian Parliament—presented a strategic surprise for India, not Pakistan. Far from being surprised, Pakistan could be considered the prime mover behind these two strategic surprises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the hiatus between India's self-perception as a status quo power and its perception by the neighbouring states as a regional bully is a main cause of stalemate in the South Asian security environment. This main argument is analysed in terms of the appurtenances of Indian power, the pronouncements of its statesmen, the perception of its voters and strategists, and the institutional arrangement of its security apparatus. Greater cohesion in the country's strategic perception will enhance the transformation of India's potential strength into an effective role in South Asian security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on a study which examined the Indian nuclear tests of May 1998. Short term calculations and long term trends; Domestic instability and coalition management; International context.

Discusses the impact of economic liberalization, interjurisdictional competition and development on federal relations in India. Background on political realignment in India and the creation of decentralized federal system; Outcomes of the economic liberalization policies undertaken by India in the 1990s; Structure of India's federal system; Effects of liberalization on federalism in India.

Provides an overview and analysis of the 1988 report on federalism in India done by the Sarkaria Commission, which was created by the Indian government to assess itself. Focus of the Sarkaria Commission on center-state relations; Stress on the context under which the Sarkaria Commission was constituted and the reactions to it; Key arguments presented by various state governments.

Discusses whether the government restructuring in India in 1992 made any difference through the better design and implementation of anti-poverty programs. Reason for the government structural adjustment; Analysis of the program of the government; Economic crisis the country experienced in 1991.

Opinion. Comments on issues related to the April 1996 elections and politics in India. Election trends; Comparison with other countries; Political objectives of parties; Risks of corruption in government.

Describes patterns and trends of provincial politics from 1936-1940 in India. Reorganization of provincial parties; Impact of provinicial elections on the economy; Provincial economy; Representation of Muslim minority provinces.