Avishek Ray

Book Review: Amales Tripathi, Indian National Congress and the Struggle for Freedom 1885–1947Indian National Congress and the Struggle for Freedom 1885–1947 by TripathiAmales. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. 618pp., £42.99 (h/b), ISBN 9780198090557

author argues for the various state governments passing legislation to give more substantive powers and legal autonomy to the PRIs. He also supports an active role for civil society and non-governmental organisations in making the PRIs more independent and autonomous. A well-researched guide with interesting newspaper highlights showing the actual functioning of these institutions, this short introduction is a must-read for anyone interested in getting an overview of India’s PRIs. However, the author shows insensitivity with regard to gender issues when he uses only the masculine gender to refer to various posts, for example, that of the district collector (pp. 117, 119). The loopholes in the Amendment Act plus the actual implementation of PRIs as highlighted in this book need to be looked into further if PRIs are to be truly strengthened.

Tom Boland (2012). Critique As a Modern Social Phenomenon: The Critical Society

apparent as we approach contemporary ‘dissidents’. The author does provide some elements to understand the forces feeding those republicans out of the peace agenda in their ‘legitimacy’ dispute. Yet, while we have a clear picture of some individual participants, some from families who have gone through significant sacrifices because of the republican cause, we are left unclear as to who constitutes the new blood of the movement, their circumstances, the context in which they are becoming the new generation, as a popular republican song went, ready to fight the ‘British’ for 800 more years if necessary. To state that ‘[t]he seemingly easily permeable borders between the dissident republican organisations emphasises the apolitical nature of these groups, with members simply transferring their allegiance to the organisation most likely to provide them with an outlet for their desire for violence’ (p. 202), is over-simplistic and fails to shed much light on this phenomenon and its persistence from a sociological point of view. The priority given to the chronological narrative over thematic analysis, with a multitude of often mutually contradictory accounts, means that at times we are unclear of what the position of the author is, such as when discussing the influence of the IRA over the civil rights movement (pp. 34–7). Finally, although Sanders states that IRA splits cannot be reduced to a political-military divide (p. 48), an often normative and polarising distinction between politics and violence, as if they were mutually exclusive and could not be integrated into a single strategy, permeates the book – the political understood merely as elections and the military as violence devoid of ideology. Republicanism itself, in spite of some elements degenerating at times into gangsterism, is largely a proof of the Clausewitzian motto which states that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Overall, Sanders’ book, despite the need of further sociological research on the conditions in which so-called ‘dissident’ republicanism is (re)emerging, represents a highly informative addition to studies on republicanism. It is of use to others interested in contentious politics more generally, particularly because of its approach to the politics of factionalism. José Antonio Gutiérrez University College Dublin

Book review: Hélène Lambert (ed.), International Refugee Law

of the work’, while Rashid imputes this to the Taliban’s ‘way of thinking’ (front and back covers). By attributing the Taliban’s emergence to convenient alliances with notorious warlords, drug barons and al-Qaeda, Zaeef’s work stands as a historical corrective for many analyses that often highlight their apocalyptical ideology. He reveals more about their modus operandi and motives but, most tellingly, their willingness to seek support from anybody whether single radical groups or global terrorists to further their cardinal cause. For this reviewer, however, there is more to Zaeef’s professions than the yearnings for the Taliban’s selfless imposition of an arcane socio-cultural credo: consolidating the Deobandi-Ghilzai domination over Durrani elites and other Turkic-Shi’a minorities, while reaching out to the broader Arab World, to the United States, China, Russia, or Iran, whichever patron served the cause. Labouring over a key point about the Taliban’s (or Zaeef’s) standing above the squabbling, corrupt Mujahedeen or Northern Alliance warlords and immunity from the vices of diplomacy or worldly gains, the casual reader may empathize with post-2001 Afghan tragedies, with the Taliban’s fatalism, or Zaeef’s idealism. Whether it is Reuben’s determinism: ‘Do I need to be this man’s enemy? ... But the world where Zaeef and I cannot live in peace is not the world I want to inhabit’; or Jonathan Steel’s refusal to challenge the Taliban as ‘nationalists, reformers and liberators rather than Islamist ideologues’. Serious readers cannot dismiss Zaeef before demanding that he answer Reuben’s cardinal question: ‘what Zaeef and those like him, would do if they once again had access to power’ (p. xxxviii).