This book contributes to the rich recent scholarship on contemporary Islam in South Asia. It provides insights into the controversies of the past 150 years over how South Asian Muslims ought to respond to the challenges of modernity and Western imperialism. Though such contests of ideas began with a few intellectuals, their consequences flowed through to touch the lives of ordinary people. The book also traces the processes, in train since British times, that have created large social categories out of diverse, dispersed communities. In the past, such communities shared only a common...

Since the publication of the 2005 Human Security Report, scholars and policy-makers have debated the causes, interpretation and implications of what the report described as a global decline in armed conflict since the end of the Cold War. Focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, this book analyses the causes and patterns of this decline.

In few regions has the apparent decline in conflict been as dramatic as in the Asia-Pacific, with annual recorded battle deaths falling in the range of 50 to 75 percent between 1994 and 2004. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, this book looks at...

Assa Doron and Robin Jeffrey argue that in India the removal and reuse of waste lays waste to human lives. People at the bottom are injured and stigmatized as they work with sewage, toxic chemicals, and rotting garbage. If India is to emerge as a model for the world, its policies will have to reach beyond the environment, to encompass empathy.