Suchergebnisse

The book addresses the very topical subject of citizen making. By delving into a range of sources - among them survey questions, historical documents, political theory, architectural design, and public policy - the book provides a unique analysis of when and why citizenship has taken root in India. Each chapter highlights the constant innovation of citizenship that has occurred in India's legal, political, social, economic and aesthetic arrangements as well as providing the basis for comparative analysis across South Asian cases and the European Union.

India's new and contested status as a nuclear power, the scale of her arms purchases, her investment in missile technology and the huge deployment of ground troops on the western front against Pakistan are issues of immediate concern to her South Asian neighbours. Since tension feeds on tension, war in Afghanistan, terrorist attacks in Kolkata, Delhi, Jammu and Srinagar, mounting tension between India and Pakistan over the issue of cross-border terrorism in Kashmir and the recent threat by General Pervez Musharraf to consider the first strike option as part of Pakistan's strategic response to Indian mobilisation have contributed to the seriousness of the situation. The probability of the regional conflict escalating into large scale nuclear war, or weapons of mass destruction finding their way into the hands of non-state actors, have drawn world attention to South Asia, which has had visits in quick succession by political leaders and military delegations from the United States, UK, Germany, France, China and Russia. The paper, focused on India's capacities, perceptions and institutional arrangements for the management of security, seeks to evaluate the significance of her status as an ?emerging? power for the security environment in Asia, and its implication for the international system. It analyses the main objective both empirically, and theoretically. The empirical aspect concerns the measurement of India's economic and military resources according to the conventional indicators of power. These facts, based on experts' accounts, are supplemented by political and institutional factors which are significant for the estimation of the power of a country. In addition, the analysis seeks to juxtapose the views of observers and actors, and locate the strategic perception of the Indian voter, an important factor in her political landscape in view of her active democratic process. These factors of contemporary politics are to be seen in the larger context of India's political and security culture, history, the ...

Following independence, the Indian state, with fresh memories of the communal violence that marked the partition of the subcontinent, committed itself to an unprecedented experiment of actualising the ideal of multiculturalism as a cornerstone of the nation and the most important basis of its legitimacy. The legitimacy of the state structure was based on the twin principle of individual rights and protection of minorities. This entailed a constitutional design committed to denying hegemony to any religion. Subsequently, as the message of democracy spread, this gave rise to many new problematic issues. Ethnic and national minorities challenged the state and its capacity to accommodate conflicting identities by demanding neutrality as well as genuine recognition and active support for their culture and religion. The essay examines this contested character of India's constitutionally guaranteed multiculturalism on the basis of the history of state formation, the freedom movement, the uncertainty of the ultimate nature of divinity in Hinduism, and thereby, illustrates how post-colonial India was able to devise a series of concrete institutions and policies in order to work her way towards new conceptions of the rights and status of minorities. Thus, the specific case of India's theoretically fuzzy multiculturalism and the abstract issue of accommodation are juxtaposed to some existing measures of the Constitution of India as well as some survey data of about ten thousand men and women shortly after the parliamentary elections of 1996. Drawing on aspects of India's political culture and the debate on Hindu theology, the essay suggests that contrary to the spectre of the rise of Hindu 'fundamentalism', India presents a relatively successful case of the growth of a multicultural nation, ensconced within of a post-colonial, democratic state.

Are riots, risings and revolutions acts of collective madness, or are they political events, offering a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a system, laying bare the legitimacy deficit that moves rational men and women to kill and die? Fun, profit, peer pressure, or moral outrage - which of these is the main motive of rioters? Is collective violence a form of violent participation, which, in the final analysis, acts as the midwife of civil society? The full investigation of these general and comparative questions is beyond the scope of my paper. Still, they provide the main inspiration for the empirical analysis undertaken here. The paper develops a model of conflict resolution based on countervailing powers, the symbolic recognition of memories of violence, and new institutional arrangements. This framework is used for the analysis of three identity-related issues from post-independence Indian politics. Two of these have been successfully resolved where as attempts to resolve the third have been less successful. Drawing on the contributions of Natalie Davis (1973), Ian Gilmour (1992) Pierre Nora (1989) and Simon Schama (1989) to collective violence and the foundation of civil societies in the west, the paper characterises the outbreak of pogroms, riots, and other forms of collective violence as political phenomena that indicate deeply seated conflicts over the core values of a society. How these conflicts are solved has important implications for the establishment of an institutional framework that promotes a society based on interpersonal trust, respect of individuals and groups, orderly rule and the rights of expression and association. Scholarly interest in the role of violence in accelerating social change has gone out of fashion since the general diffusion of utopian ideas like democracy, social capital and world governance in western liberal democracies. The insistence of donors in the North and their clients in the South on these canons as the only modes of correct political behaviour has consequence ...

Has the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), in power in India's central government following its massive mandate in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, become a normal member of India's party family, or does it remain the quintessential outsider, whose electoral success is seen as a threat to India's liberal, democratic and secular ethos? This article applies the Downsian median voter argument to analyze this puzzle. A comparison with the gradual moderation of Europe's Christian Democratic parties helps generate four enabling conditions that account for the moderation of extremist parties in electoral democracies. Taking these conditions into account, the article explains why the BJP, while fully integrated within the electoral system of India, is nevertheless seen by India's mainstream parties and bulk of the media and civil society groups as an outsider to the democratic political system, and why the BJP's ambivalent moderation is likely to endure, at least in the short run.