India: Federalism and the Accommodation of Ethnic Nationalism

Abstract

An analysis of three major ethnic movements in India is intended to shed light on conditions under which mechanisms of federalism are successful or unsuccessful in accommodating such groups. The case of the Tamils in Tamilnadu during the 1950s-1960s resulted in successful accommodation while conflicts of the Sikhs in the Punjab during the 1980s was only successfully resolved after a decade of terrorist & state violence. The Muslims in Kashmir during the 1990s exemplify the failure to halt conflict. A description of India's changing political context highlights factors that help to explain why some territorial cleavages are more successfully accommodated than others. Success is said to be largely dependent upon how well central authority is institutionalized within the federal democracy as well as the willingness of ruling groups to share a certain amount of power & resources with mobilized groups. It is concluded that Indian federalism works in general; however, the more a federal system functions as a unitary system, the less it is able to accommodate ethnic/territorial cleavages. 8 References. J. Lindroth