This book provides a micro-historical analysis of the emergence and contemporary dynamics of recent ethnic sub-nationalist insurgencies in South Asia. Using comparative case studies, it discusses the causes of each insurgency, analyses the trajectory and dynamics of each including attempts at resolution, and highlights the wider theories of ethno-nationalist insurgency and mobilization.

Bringing together an international group of contributors, the book covers insurgencies in India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Nepal, and Bangladesh. It questions why ethnic sub-nationalist insurgencies...

Religion, violence, and ethnicity are all intertwined in the history of Pakistan. The entrenchment of landed interests, operationalized through violence, ethnic identity, and power through successive regimes has created a system of 'authoritarian clientalism.' This book offers comparative, historicist, and multidisciplinary views on the role of identity politics in the development of Pakistan.

Bringing together perspectives on the dynamics of state-building, the book provides insights into contemporary processes of national contestation which are crucially affected by their...

Social struggles in India target both the state and private corporations. Three subaltern struggles against development in Gujarat, India, succeeded, to varying degrees, due to legalism from below and translocal solidarity, but that success has been compromised by its gendered geographies.

Based on extensive field research, this book examines the reasons for the three social movements succeess. It analyses the contradictory reality of the deepening of democracy along with coercive state measures in the era of neoliberal development, the importance of the legal changes in the...

Historically, Indian cinema has positioned women at the intersection of tradition and a more evolving culture, portraying contradictory attitudes which affect women s roles in public and private spheres.

Examining the work of three directors from West Bengal, this book addresses the juxtaposition of tradition and culture regarding women in Bengali cinema. It argues the antithesis of women s roles, particularly in terms of ideas of resistance, revolution, change, and autonomy, by suggesting they convey resistance to hegemonic structures, encouraging a re-envisioning of women s...

Interpretations of manhood have unfolded in India within a middle class cultural milieu shaped by an assertive self-confidence fuelled by liberalisation, a process by which India has been integrated into the global political economy and the prominence of Hindutva or Hindu nationalist politics.

This book unpacks a particular gendered vision of nation in the modern Indian context by drawing on popular films. This muscular nationalism is an intersection of a specific vision of masculinity with the political doctrine of nationalism. The idea of nation is animated by an idea of manhood...

This book argues that post-2001 Afghanistan is best understood in terms of political networks. It discusses how informal political networks, engaging in patronage, corruption and illegality, effectively constitute the state, overriding state-centric and system-centric approaches to state building. It considers how political networks evolved, explores how they manage to control key sectors of the economy including mining, banking and drugs, and examines how they affect elections and political processes in the legislature. The book concludes that although these political networks exacerbate...