Suchergebnisse

In spite of all the difficulties, the November 2013 elections in Nepal passed off for the most part peacefully and with fewer irregularities than ever before in Nepal. The electoral system was the same as the system used in 2008, with a combination of First Past the Post and Proportional Representation. The results were a defeat for the Maoists, who went from being the biggest single party to the third biggest party. The victors were the two older established parties, the Nepali Congress and the Unified Marxist-Leninists, who seem to have benefitted from the voters dissatisfaction with the Maoists' showing in government. The second big losers in the election were the parties who favoured an ethnic-based solution to Nepal's problems, though the relationship between the Madheshis and the centre remains an unsolved problem. (Asian Aff/GIGA)

This paper examines Max Weber's `The Religion of India' and places it in the wider context of his work. It tries to show in detail how Weber's study of India formed part of the comparative analysis of world civilizations which was the natural result of his interest in the causal antecedents of the rise of industrial capitalism in the West. With this background correctly understood, it is possible to appreciate why Weber approached Indian religion in the way that he did, and to avoid some common mistakes. Weber is summarized on the most important aspects of Indian religion and a brief attempt is made to state how valid his remarks still are.

This book examines in rich detail the lives, struggles, and strategies of South Asian activists seeking to advance various political, social, and environmental causes. Through a series of case studies from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka on activists' efforts, it elucidates how they mediate between different spheres that are often (and sometimes legally) kept apart: the political and the legal, the economic and the political, the local and the international. The uniqueness of this book lies in its treatment of 'civil society' as a process brought into being by the actions of specific i

This volume, the second in the Governance, Conflict, and Civic Action series, examines civil society in South Asia through case studies of different kinds of ethnic ('communal') activism. With chapters covering Nepal, Sri Lanka, and India (Darjeeling, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Tamil Nadu), it avoids the 'methodological nationalism' so frequent in social science publications on the region. The articles examine Hindu nationalism, Dalit activism in India and Nepal, and the Janajati movement in Nepal, and show how they are animated by common ideals and themes, such as emphasis on the involvemen

MN Srinivas' concept of 'the dominant caste' has rightly been highly influential. The forms that dominance takes have changed a good deal since his day, but inequality and hierarchy have persisted. Modern ideological justifications of dominance are frequently at variance with those of former times, leading to plenty of paradoxes. These paradoxes are illustrated with examples from Nepal, but their application is much wider. Thanks to Nepal's different political history, the Nepali case can very usefully be contrasted with India and other parts of South Asia to highlight how, and in which contexts, hierarchy as a value persists even when equality is written into numerous constitutional provisions and laws.

AbstractAnthropologists have spilt much ink deconstructing concepts inherited from the Enlightenment. Religion, possibly the most misleading such concept, has proved highly resistant to the acid of cross‐cultural comparison. Debates about the nature of religion go back to sociocultural anthropology's beginnings as a discipline and beyond. Proposed definitions have been numerous, but none has come close to universal acceptance, mainly because conventional definitions are secularized versions of Abrahamic, and especially Protestant, positions and reproduce their essentialism and intellectualism. I argue that by looking closely at the way religious phenomena are conceptualized in South Asia, and especially at how distinct types of religion are practised in characteristically different spaces, a fresh take on the subject is possible. Religion as practised is not one thing but at least three distinct activities and should be conceptualized as such. But, if that is so, how and why is the totalizing conventional view still so pervasive and so powerful? Seeking the answer to that question takes us back to the constitution of modernity and the relationship of religion to the nation‐state. The way forward is to contest the way in which religion has become the last bastion of pure essentialism.