Subrata K. Mitra

The reluctant hegemon: India's self-perception and the South Asian strategic environment

This article argues that the hiatus between Indias self-perception as a status quo power and its perception by the neighbouring states as a regional bully is a main cause of stalemate in the South Asian security environment. This main argument is analysed in terms of the appurtenances of Indian power, the pronouncements of its statesmen, the perception of its voters and strategists, and the institutional arrangement of its security apparatus. Greater cohesion in the countrys strategic perception will enhance the transformation of Indias potential strength into an effective role in South Asian security.

Room to Maneuver in the Middle: Local Elites, Political Action, and the State in India

The intuitively plausible relationship between protest behavior and political instability is empirically supported by a large number of studies. Statistical evidence in support of this conjecture is provided by the correlation between indicators of protest behavior such as the presence of extremist parties and groups or the salience of an antisystem dimension and the rapid rise and fall of governments. The theories of writers such as Huntington, Gurr, and Davies suggest that when social and political mobility overtake the rate of economic growth, die result is radical challenge to the system by extremist parties and protest movements, leading to political instability and the loss of legitimacy. The main argument of this article is that the relationship between protest behavior and legitimacy may be more complicated than that, particularly when state responsiveness under the impact of popular protest and redistributive economic policies is seen as an intervening factor. By drawing on a survey of localelites in India, the article shows that certain forms of protest behavior, used in conjunction with conventional forms of participation such as contacting bureaucrats and political leaders at higher levels, might actually contribute to greater legitimacy of the state by providing an alternative channel of participation, extending the political agenda, and contributing to the recruitment of new and previously powerless social forces.

War and peace in South Asia: A revisionist view of India-Pakistan relations

Although Indias relations with all her neighbours have been marked by occasional tension, it is her conflict with Pakistan that gives the specific character to the state of war and peace in South Asia. The two neighbours have fought in 1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999. Nuclear weapons and delivery systems that both India and Pakistan possess have enhanced the danger of war in the region. The standard view of India-Pakistan relations presents the two nation-states as natural adversaries whose antipathy towards one another is the essential consequence of Hindu-Muslim conflict. The revisionist view presented here, which draws on the construction of regional politics by the protagonists, questions the structural-realist model that underpins the standard view. The article concludes that democratisation and taking cognisance of the role of China would contribute to a comprehensive explanatory model of war and peace in South Asia.

Desecularising the State: Religion and Politics in India after Independence

The relationship of religion and politics is continuously fascinating and elusive, not least because it is rarely posed in a direct way. In stable democracies, incidents which are rather out of the ordinary, such as publishing the Satanic Verses in the United Kingdom or sporting the Islamic headscarf in a French state school, might push the issue temporarily to the centre of the political arena until the categories of normal politics, such as class, region, language or ethnicity, incorporate it or contrive to edge it beyond public visibility. In developing countries, one is accustomed to the more salient presence of religion in the public sphere: for example, the broad sweep of an Islamic revolution in Iran, popular jihad in the Middle East, the militant Sikhs in the Punjab, or the battle for the birthplace of Rama in North India. However, the intelligentsia in these countries who speak with the authority of modern science and the modern state see these events, important as they are, as the expression of primordial sentiments, and indicative of the underdeveloped nature of the people concerned, rather than as the political expression of unresolved issues, ill concealed by the fabric of normal politics and not articulated by political institutions.

Language and federalism: the multi‐ethnic challenge

Ethnic, linguistic, and religious identities have emerged during the past decade as major challenges to the institutional capacity of the modern state to cope with cultural diversity. As such, multilingualism, which formulates a response to this challenge, has emerged as a new focus of empirical research on federalism. This provides a contrast to classic studies of federalism, which concentrated on the institutional division of powers between a state and its constituent units. Language plays a double role in this: as a thin bond for communication and negotiation between political actors, and a thick system of meanings, carrying the burden of history, religion, culture, ritual, and memory. The article studies this ambivalence of language through a comparison of India and Switzerland, two quite different cases of relatively successful accommodation of linguistic diversity and discusses the constitutional means and policy measures that might enable a modern state to balance regional diversity and national unity in the face of the multi-ethnic challenge.

The Rational Politics of Cultural Nationalism: Subnational Movements of South Asia in Comparative Perspective

The recent politics of South Asia has been dominated by separatist movements that have waged violent struggles to assert their control over parts of existing national states. The precise moment of the outbreak of these movements is influenced by the perception of the geopolitical context by their leaders and the stability of the central state against which they rebel. But their main driving force originates from a shared belief in their unique and distinct cultural identity, which, in their eyes, justifies their right to an exclusive homeland. This article examines subnationalism in South Asia as a special case of cultural nationalism. Subnationalism has long been an anomaly for both liberal and Marxist social theorists, who concede its existence but cannot explain it adequately. The analysis undertaken here moves beyond the sociological and historical accounts of the origins and evolution of subnationalism in South Asia by formulating a political explanation drawing on theories of rational choice and collective action. The article argues that (a) leaders of subnationalist movements draw on both sentiments and interests, and (b) the direction and pace of these movements are influenced by the political resources that they are able to mobilize. Though the case studies on which the article draws are mainly from South Asia, the model that underpins them is applicable to other cultural and temporal contexts as well.

When rebels become stakeholders : democracy, agency and social change in India

Preface Introduction: Democracy and the Puzzle of Orderly Social Change The Context of Social Change: Interfacing Society and State in India Continuity and Change in Indian Politics: An Inter-generational Analysis The Elements of Political Agency and the Limits of Consensus Political Competition, Social Cleavages and Institutionalisation of the Party System Re-inventing the Nation: The Dialectics of Nation and Region in India Poverty, Welfare and Social Opportunity in India Building Social Capital from Above and Below: Locality, Region and Trust in India India at Sixty: Social Change and the Resilience of Democracy Beyond India: Democracy and Social Change in Comparative Perspective Appendices Bibliography Index

Politics in India : structure, process and policy

1. Introduction: Modern Politics and Traditional Society in the Making of Indian Democracy 2. Pre-modern Pasts of Modern Politics: The Legacies of British Colonial Rule 3. From Homo Hierarchicus to Plural Society: The State and the Citizen in India 4. Strength with Democracy: Separation of Powers and the Imperative of Leadership 5. The Federal Structure: Balancing Unity and Diversity 6. The Articulation and Aggregation of Interests: Indias Two-Track Strategy 7. Economic Development and Social Justice 8. Engaging the World: Foreign Policy and Nation-Building in India 9. Conclusion: Some General Lessons of the Indian Case 10. Further Reading

Nuclear, Engaged, and Non-Aligned

When analysed in terms of the exacting norms of international-relations theories such as neo-realism, constructivism and liberalism, Indias foreign policy over the past six decades comes across as contradictory and incoherent. These infelicities, internal inconsistencies and sparks of idealism give Indian policy, as a whole, an appearance of a mystical otherness, as distinguished from the hard-nosed realism currently in favour. This article questions this impression of Indian exceptionalism. It attempts to understand its inner logic in terms of an analytical tool box, which combines the key explanatory factors of the leading schools of international politics and adds some further assumptions specific to the Indian context and culture. The article draws on the insights of this hybrid model to examine the evolution of Indias foreign policy from Independence to the present day, starting with the foundational years under the stewardship of Jawaharlal Nehru and his successors, the ambivalent relationship with the United States leading to the current nuclear deal. On the basis of the insights gleaned from this retrospective, the article makes a case for a fresh evaluation of the original concept of non-alignment in the light of the state of contemporary international politics, and visualize it as a suitable norm for the orderly conduct of politics in the world we live in.

The Ambivalent Moderation of Hindu Nationalism in India

Despite regular participation in national and regional elections and occupation of office both at the centre and in the regional governments, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has not acquired the aura of moderation. It has not achieved acceptance into the party system of India in a manner that would make it comparable to Christian Democratic parties in Europe. This appears puzzling in the light of Downs’ moderation thesis, which suggests that regular participation in free, fair and competitive elections transforms extremist parties to moderates as they converge towards the median voter. The article approaches this puzzling counterfactual in intra-system comparison by drawing on the case of Sikh nationalism. With a focus on BJP, the article presents an analysis of party competition, party programs, policies and public opinion data on issue positions and the social base of the party. In conclusion, three general enabling conditions are identified that help explain the deviant case of the ambivalent moderation of the BJP. 印度人民党虽然参加全国和地方选举，虽然在中央和地方政府中任职，但并没有因此就有稳健克制的样子。它没有能够像欧洲的基督教民主党那样被纳入印度的政党体系。这就成为汤恩的克制理论解释不了的谜团，按汤氏的理论，正常参加自由、公正而竞争性的选举，会使极端主义政党变得稳健克制，向一般投票者趋近。本文通过系统内比较，以民族主义的锡克教为例，破解了这个谜团。作者聚焦印度人民党，分析了政党竞争，政党计划、政策以及关于某些话题立场的舆论资料、还有政党的社会基础。作者发现三种情形能够一般性地解释印度人民党的偏激不稳健。