Review of Deepak Nayyar's Catch Up (OUP, 2013) on emerging economies

The Book Review / July 2014 1

C o n t e n t s

Aasim Khan Post Haste: Quintessential India by B.G. Verghese 2

Rajesh Rajagopalan Hindu Nationalism and the Evolution of Contemporary Indian Security:

Portents of Power by Chris Ogden 3

Atul Mishra The Relevance of the Ideas of Swami Vivekananda on International Relations

as a Case Study by Sarup Prasad Ghosh 5

Tapan Biswal Contours of India’s Foreign Policy: Changes and Challenges

edited by Mohammed Badrul Alam 6

Srikanth Kondapalli Asymmetrical Threat Perceptions in India-China Relations by Fan Tien-Sze 8

Vyjayanti Raghavan India and the Republic of Korea: Engaged Democracies by Skand R. Tayal 9

S. Samuel C. Rajiv Revolution 20: The Power of the People is Greater Than the People in Power

by Wael Ghonim 10

Suhasini Haidar The Syria Dilemma edited by Nader Hashemi and Danny Postel 12

Ali Ahmed When Counterinsurgency Wins: Sri Lanka’s Defeat of the Tamil Tigers

by Ahmed S. Hashim 13

Priyanka Singh No Exit from Pakistan: Amercia’s Tortured Relationship with Islamabad

by Daniel S. Markey 14

Samreen Mushtaq Kashmir’s Narratives of Conflict: Identity Lost in Space and Time

by Manisha Gangahar 15

Harihar Bhattacharya Remapping India: New States and Their Political Origins by Louise Tillin 16

Roshni Sengupta Politics in India: Structure, Process and Policy by Subrata K. Mitra 18

Rajendra Kumar Pandey The Fall and Rise of Telangana by Gautam Pingle 20

Padam Nepal Questions of Identity in Assam: Location, Migration, Hybridity

by Nandana Dutta 21

G. Amarjit Sharma Cultural Contours of North East India by Birendranath Datta 23

Sajal Nag A Century of Protests: Peasant Politics in Assam Since 1900

by Arupjyoti Saikia 25

Mohammad Sajjad The Making of a Province: Select Documents on the Creation of Modern

Bihar, 1874-1917, Parts I, II, III edited by Ashok Aounshuman, Srikant

and Abhay Kumar 27

Sucharita Sengupta The Oxford Anthology of the Modern Indian City (Two Volumes): The City in

its Plennitude; Making and Unkaing the City: Politics, Culture and Life

Forms edited by Vinay Lal 29

Pritam Singh Catch Up: Developing Countries in the World Economy by Deepak Nayyar 30

Pooja Paswan Panchayati Raj by Kuldeep Mathur 32

Rumki Basu Economic Offences: A Compendium of Crimes in Prose and Verse

by S. Subramanian 32

Renu Addlakha Disability, Gender and State Policy: Exploring Margins by Nilika Mehrotra 33

Baran Farooqi Shakespeare and the Art of Lying edited by Shormishtha Panja 35

Editorial Advisory BoardRomila ThaparNarayani GuptaGirish KarnadRitu MenonChitra NarayananT.C.A. Srinivasa RaghavanMallika Joseph

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Volume XXXVIII No. 7 July 2014

2 The Book Review / July 2014

Past Perfect

Aasim Khan

POST HASTE: QUINTESSENTIAL INDIABy B.G. Verghese

Tranquebar, Chennai, 2014, pp. 372,`1295.00

A t the time when India was on the cusp of Independence, it could be said with

a fair degree of confidence that the expecta-tions of its people did not exceed theircollective hope. The role of its political leader-ship then was to organize this economy ofhope in the state’s favour. Thus conceived,the dream-like nationalist vision has sincebeen narrativized so often that it is easy totell its core elements: the rainbow likediversity of the nation, its multicultural andplural heritage, the syncretism in its arts andculture, and above all a force of ‘destiny’shaping its progress. Today, each of theseelements is under scrutiny. And not just inthe history departments but in the publicarena. From literary fiction to evening talkshows on television, the economy of hope isin steep decline.

Instead an unrelenting cycle of expecta-tions is emerging. Idealism is out, at least forthe moment. Post Haste is then an unusuallytimed book, offering a general overview of5000 years of India’s history, at a time whenone can make a killing elaborating on a singlemoment of the contemporary era. But thereis a twist in the tale, at least in its telling.B.G. Verghese narrates the story of ‘India—that is Bharat’ using postal stamps, giving avisual dimension to each of the constitutive

elements of the dream narrative. Even lesscolourful subjects such as the debates deliver-ing its Constitution or the emergence of itseconomic development and policy paradigmsin modern India are provided with postalstamp citations. I haven’t seen any other booklike this anywhere else in the world. The nov-elty factor alone should bring wide attentionto the book.

It is also a real labour of love, an extraor-dinary effort coming from a man who has beenwriting about India for over five decades andhas recently penned a weighty autobiogra-phy—a reflection of an uncommon workethic. Each of the ten chapters that make thisbook contain dozens of stamps which are ac-curately reproduced page after page. One isreminded of the history text-books which havegarish pictorial references to go with the text.Hopefully this innovative effort, which is es-sentially an exercise in pedagogy, would notgo unnoticed.

The author introduces the book with achapter devoted to the precolonial origins andevolution of the institution of post, or dak asit is more popularly known in India. There

are interesting nuggets of information through-out the book. For instance it is not very wellknown (at least I wasn’t sure) that the officialdistance between two cities in India refers tothe distance between their general post of-fices. Or that India had the first ‘air mail’ any-where in the world—a touring aviator ferrieda bag of letters in his plane over the river Ganga,thus avoiding the chaos of an ongoing Kumbhmela!

Like many mainstream chroniclers of hisgeneration, the author tends to highlight thealluring aspects of print and postal cultures,often ignoring the more critical perspectiveson how the project was often directly linkedwith the project of colonialism and empirebuilding in India. The oversight is inevitable.The lens of postal stamps would only providea view of history sanctioned by the state, co-lonial or otherwise. Unlike ‘pirate radio’ thereis no equivalent ‘pirate post’, though the ar-rival of the internet based electronic mail israpidly eroding the territorial logic of postalnetworks. In the digital age, communicationsis now an issue of ‘global public interest’.

Perhaps the emphasis on communicationsis then to apprise a fast-moving world of theutility and purpose of nationalist imaginariesin the age of globalization. The author con-stantly emphasizes the ‘public’ participationin the making of this institution. For instance,the book has several references to post in thepublic arena, including the appearance of dakin popular culture and cinema. Verghese him-self has been a leading advocate of ‘public ser-vice’ media and communications paradigms(he was a member of the famous UNESCOMacBride Commission) and his writings bothin the popular press and in government haveconstantly underscored the fact that commu-nications and its governance should prima-rily be determined in favour of ‘public interest’rather than bend to the market’s logic. The ex-traordinary diversity in the postal stamps is afine demonstration of how successful the statewas in translating the secular dream narrativeinto such a public institution.

But the willingness to expand the argu-ment sometimes renders it just a bit too plati-tudinous. Clearly, the author must be awareof the declining popularity of the dream nar-rative. The multiple wars and conflict, theinternal ‘emergencies’ and numerous failingsof the central planners have yielded an intel-lectual turn to be more inclusive of the subal-

tern versions of history and vagaries of every-day life. But the result, while still not with-out a certain romance, ends up being so broadas to offer no explanation for the grand folliesof India’s postcolonial leaders, a history with-out any villains to hang. Perhaps a Gandhianwould approve.

In another era, Minoo Masani wrote abook titled Our India (Verghese cites the bookas an early inspiration). Masani’s book was acall to arms, and he used some powerful im-agery to represent his vision of a hyper-mod-ernist future for India, ending his monographwith Iqbal’s famous boast:

The finest country in the world is our India,We are its nightingales, it is our rose-garden;

B.G. Verghese also makes a reference toIqbal but he ends the book by quotingGandhi and his minimal ideal of wiping thetear off every eye. Post Haste, despite its title,has no boastfulness or urgency and ends witha gentle reminder that ‘we must hurry to re-deem the promise of the Constitution.’ It is abook that lacks a professional historian’s heart-less judgment or a poet’s evocative metaphors,but it is not bereft of a collector’s endless en-thusiasm or the age-old wisdom of alwayskeeping hope a little ahead of expectations.

Aasim Khan is a PhD candidate at King’s College,London.


Sub-structural Factors in EvolvingForeign Policy

Rajesh Rajagopalan

HINDU NATIONALISM AND THE EVOLUTION OFCONTEMPORARY INDIAN SECURITY: PORTENTS

OF POWERBy Chris Ogden

Series Editors: Sumit Ganguly and E. SridharanOxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014,

pp. 257, `795.00

There is little doubt that domestic politi-cal ideologies, ideas and personalities play

an important role in the foreign policies ofstates. We can hardly talk about Indian for-eign policy without considering JawaharlalNehru’s personality or his ideological predi-lections, or for that matter that of others in-cluding Indira Gandhi or Morarji Desai. Butit is also equally clear that somewhat moreimpersonal, structural forces are also at work.Though there are many continuities in In-dian foreign policy since Independence, onlya brave scholar would suggest that the end ofthe Cold War bipolar structure has had noimpact on New Delhi’s internationalbehaviour. Nevertheless, the current fashionin international relations theory, especiallyoutside the United States, is to emphasizenational, cultural, ideational and other sub-structural factors in understanding why statesdo what they do. In keeping with the fash-ion, Chris Ogden argues energetically in hisnew book that the Hindu nationalist ideol-ogy of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) sig-nificantly altered Indian ‘security identity’

when the BJP-led National Democratic Alli-ance (NDA) Government ruled the country(1998-2004).

The question of how much impact the BJPhad on Indian foreign and security policies whilethey were in power is an important one. TheVajpayee Government’s decision to conduct anuclear test within weeks of taking over power,and in great secrecy, was seen by many as anindication of how Hindu nationalist ideologydrove the BJP Government. Afterwards therewould be much criticism that scholars, ana-lysts and even intelligence agencies did not paysufficient attention to the role that ideologyplayed in the BJP’s foreign policy because theBJP had stated their objectives in as manywords in their election manifesto.

However, was the decision to conduct the1998 nuclear test a result of ideology or cir-cumstance? The BJP’s ideology definitely ap-pears to have had a role but the context can-not be ruled out either. In the aftermath ofthe 1995 indefinite extension of the NuclearNon-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the ac-celerating talks about the Comprehensive TestBan Treaty (CTBT), there was a strong senseamongst the strategic community in NewDelhi—including in the Government—that

India needed to conduct nuclear tests andbecome an overt nuclear power. So much sothat at least two previous governments in thethree years before the 1998 tests consideredthe question seriously, though they ultimatelydecided against it. But the circumstances thatled to such consideration had become evenmore acute by 1998. Irrespective of whichgovernment came to power in the 1998 elec-tions, they would have had to consider thisquestion again. Would a non-NDA govern-ment have conducted the tests? Maybe not,but this suggests that the question of strate-gic context versus ideology is somewhat morecomplicated than heated ideological rhetoric.What is often forgotten in such debates is thatthe decision to build a nuclear arsenal wasactually taken a decade earlier, by Prime Min-ister Rajiv Gandhi, because of growing evidencethat Pakistan was either a nuclear weaponspower or well on its way to becoming one.

Adding personality issues can help fur-ther complicate the analysis. Though the lastword on this is yet to be written, all accountssuggest that Rajiv Gandhi was personally sin-cere about nuclear disarmament—eventhough he ordered India’s nuclear arsenal tobe built. On the other hand, Vajpayee, whoordered the tests in 1998, was the one whotwo decades earlier voted with Morarji Desaiin a Cabinet Committee on Security meetingagainst restarting the Indian nuclear weaponsprogramme, which had been halted after the1974 test.

The point is that many times context,ideology, personality—and maybe other fac-tors too—interact in a complicated mannerthat is not easy to disentangle. In his de-fence, Ogden’s analysis is slightly more com-plex than his conclusions would lead one tosuspect and he recognizes that many of thepolicies that the BJP/NDA followed had itsroots in previous non-BJP/NDA policies andthat most of these were also followed by thesubsequent Congress-led UPA (United Pro-gressive Alliance) Government. But even here,it would have helped to have a more detailedanalysis of the specifics of Indian foreign policy-making on some of these issues. The difficul-ties are of course obvious: the Indian Govern-ment is notoriously opaque on such issues,especially when these issues concern contem-porary policy. Ogden has attempted to over-come this problem by interviewing former

officials and members of the Indian strategiccommunity. A small quibble here is that mostare not identified. While it is understand-able that recently retired officials might haveinsisted on secrecy, I am not sure why ana-lysts and scholars and think-tank heads re-quired anonymity.

A bigger quibble is with Ogden’s use ofthe concept of norms. Norms are deeply heldviews that condition behaviour, making somechoices apparent and others not. Norms thushave an important role in strategic policychoices of decision-makers but it is not thesame as ideas or ideology because norms arefar deeper and less amenable to change andthey work somewhat more surreptitiously thanideas and ideology. But Ogden treats normsas more akin to security policy ideas thatcould constantly change. Was there a ‘normmutual distrust’ between India and the USduring the Cold War (p. 44)? Were the BJP’sforeign and security policy agenda a ‘norm’ orpolicy prescriptions (p. 50)? While norms doevolve, the suggestion that specific policychoices with regard to India’s neighbours, orIsrael or the US constitute norms can lead toseeing norms everywhere, and norms whichwill change quite dramatically and frequently.

This is not to suggest that norms and ‘se-curity identity’ play no role in Indian foreign


and security policies but that these norms haveevolved slowly. These changes were the conse-quence of structural conditions: both theshift from a bipolar Cold War system to aunipolar US dominant system as well as thechange in India’s position within the systemfrom a relatively weak power to one that wasincreasingly thought of by others as a conse-quential one. Though this will become mostpronounced after 1991, some elements werevisible even a decade earlier. India’s policytowards the US had begun to warm up inthe early 1980s, and it continued under theP.V. Narasimha Rao’s Congress minorityGovernment in the 1990s. Similar changestook place about India’s Israel policy, and assuggested earlier, about nuclear policy. Dra-matic or traumatic events can shove normdevelopments in one direction or another butevery change in foreign policy leadership can-not be characterized as leading to shiftingforeign policy norm. If there was a deeperand more dramatic shift under the NDA Gov-ernment and if it was related to changingnorms that Hindu nationalist ideology in-troduced, it requires greater evidence thanOgden provides. This slow changing ofnorms also explains why the UPA Govern-ment continued many of the NDA’s ap-proach in foreign and security policies, be-cause these did not represent such a dramaticshift as has been made out but rather gradualchanges that pre-dated the BJP/NDA ruleand represented a large shift.

If minimizing structural changes repre-sents one aspect of the problem when focus-ing on collective identity as represented bynorms, another is the minimizing of the roleof personality in strategic policy. No one whoemphasized the BJP ideological roots couldhave foreseen the kind of Pakistan and Chinapolicy that the Vajpayee Governmentadopted. Indeed, there was disquiet withinthe Sangh Parivar about these policies butVajpayee went ahead nevertheless. Irrespec-tive of whether these were wise or successfulpolices, the fact remains that what determinedthese policies were Vajpayee’s personalityrather than any Hindutva ideology. In focus-ing on collective norms, we also forget theimprint of personality on state behaviour.

These are important issues for both In-dian security policy analyses and internationalrelations theory. Until now, much of the as-sessment of the BJP/NDA security policy hasbeen impressionistic rather than empiricalanalysis. Ogden’s work is a start in treatingthe subject with the seriousness it deserves.

Rajesh Rajagopalan is Professor at the School of

International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University,

New Delhi.


Upanishads As the Key to Peace

Atul Mishra

THE RELEVANCE OF THE IDEAS OF SWAMIVIVEKANANDA ON INTERNATIONAL

RELATIONS: INDIA’S FOREIGN RELATIONS AS ACASE STUDY

By Sarup Prasad GhoshK.P. Bagchi and Company, Kolkata, 2013,

pp. xv+351, price not stated.

It is often noted that International Rela-tions in India does not have a culture of

meaningful internal criticism. Groups ofscholars may occasionally comment onpolicy implications of one another’s work,but scholarly criticisms that are fruitful fornew knowledge are hard to find. Why? Somefault tardy work ethics of scholars; othersblame the disrepair of institutions. Theseare important reasons. But a basic problemis how many of us conceptualize the field.Many in India take IR to be the domainwhere several excesses of thought abouthuman affairs outside the state can be com-mitted. The ‘international’, the ‘global’, the‘world’ and the ‘foreign’ mean similar thingsto them. They come equipped with the li-cense to ‘think’ about the ‘world order’ and‘global issues’. The enormity of their sub-ject matter does not give them the respon-sibility to be rigorous. Their unregulatedminds produce shoddy pieces of writing thataffect the training of students who readthem. The book reviewed here is an example

of such writing. We appear to think of bigthings in shallow ways. And it shows.

The book is poorly conceptualized; thisis its basic but not the only flaw. The readerdoes not quite understand if it is aboutSwami Vivekananda’s international thoughtor about India’s foreign policy. There is astark disconnect between its loose title andits empty subtitle. Given that Vivekanandadied much before even the contours of an‘Indian’ foreign policy had emerged, youwonder if the author really wants to presentan account of how the monk understoodthe modern world and India’s potential con-tribution to that world as a modernizingcivilization. But even here, the book’s am-bitious self-description evades clarity. Itseeks to ‘bring out’ Vivekananda’s visual-ization of the role of Vedanta in decisionmaking on foreign affairs. It also tries to fore-ground his views on problems facing inter-state affairs. Moreover, it tries to show the‘connection’ and ‘contradiction’ betweenthe ‘concepts’ of Vivekananda and the ideasof the political leaders of the modern age.Finally, it tries to show how Vivekananda’sideas can help solve problems of inter-stateaffairs!

The author emphasizes the ‘close rela-tions’ of Vivekananda’s ideas with different

branches of social sciences and is identified asan ‘orator of repute’ who delivers ‘special lec-tures on topics related to Social Science’. Fourof the five chapters in the book claim to bediscussions on India’s ‘relations’ with majorpowers—the United States, Britain, Russiaand China—in the light of Vivekananda’s‘views’ and ‘ideas’. A stand alone chapter dis-cusses the role of religion in relations of na-tions. These chapters are portrayed as casestudies of the relevance of Vivekananda’s ideason India’s foreign affairs. But there is littleevidence of conscious effort made to arrangeideas in any order. Each chapter is a mix oflong quotes from Vivekananda, the author’simpressions about the country in question,abrupt mention of the key issues in India’srelations with that country, inane remarksabout the need for securing national interest,international peace and harmony, and an em-phasis, every few page-length paragraphs, onthe potential role of Vedantic wisdom in solv-ing all—no exaggeration—the major problemsof international relations.

In a book replete with substantial pas-sages about issues and events in the connectedlives of India and these countries over the pastcentury, the author’s peculiar understandingof his subject matter is amply evident.‘Indiansand Americans share certain common demo-cratic practices after their independence fromthe British Raj’ (p.19). Carelessness or badhistorical sense? ‘The universal suffrage whichis the basis of liberal democracy as we find inUSA, India and many other countries of thefree world is also the expression of the infi-nite—Atman, the infinite divine Self whichaccepts and respects the concept of humanequality in spite of his or her apparent differ-ences’ (p.61). Indian philosophy meets mod-ern political theory? ‘Of course, there are manyother concerns faced by India and Russiamostly of a mundane nature, such as regard-ing controversial global issues of Afghanistanand Iraq. India and Russia more or less haveconvergent views which have created a strongbase for a common stand on major interna-tional problems we are facing of late’ (p.174).How can something be mundane but con-troversial and global at the same time? ‘In thepostmodern age the problems attached tosocial sciences are often analysed from theangle of power politics because it is custom-ary to evaluate socio-political events from theperspective of real politic’ (p.164). Does thismake any sense?

The theme of the book is this: Vivek-ananda had grasped the essence of the mod-ern world, understood the workings of itsmajor nations and was clear that theUpanishads held the key to peace and pros-perity in human affairs. If major states, in-cluding India, struggle with issues of con-flict and cooperation, it is because they havenot realized and accepted the role of spiritu-ality in international affairs. All problems canbe solved only if political actors acknowledgethe role of spiritual self-realization and actfrom that higher consciousness. Secularists—‘the disciples of Macaulay, Marx and Neo-Conservatives’ (p.304)—may deny it, butreligion matters in relations among nations.Islamic countries are one of the biggestsources of strife in the world. Eastern reli-gions, including Hinduism and Buddhism(the author claims the latter is part of theformer) are resources that can guide contem-porary human affairs. India can show the wayto the world by reworking its relations with‘Oriental’ (South East Asian) countries withwhom it shares religious, spiritual andcivilizational linkages.

These are indigenist and revivalist im-pulses—not carefully thought out argu-ments—made to appear credible throughloose but regular invocations of thingsVivekananda said. One struggles to find away of engaging with them.

Atul Mishra is Assistant Professor at the Centre

for Studies in International Politics and Gover-

nance, School of International Studies, Central

University of Gujarat, Gujarat.


From Nonalignment to Globalization

Tapan Biswal

CONTOURS OF INDIA’S FOREIGN POLICY:CHANGES AND CHALLENGES

Edited by Mohammed Badrul AlamReference Press, New Delhi, 2014, pp. 300,

`975.00

The book under review, a collection ofessays, is thematically divided into four

sections. It juxtaposes the Indian state withinthe broad process of globalization and sees itas an influential power as a result of its grow-ing military and economic might. There is abrief overview of the stand taken by the In-dian state right after attaining Independenceand its decision to remain aloof in a politi-cally divided world during the Cold War era.It also highlights how India in the post-ColdWar era adopted economic liberalization andprivatization which led it to be closer to USA.This meant increasing influence of the statein the international community. It highlightsthe joint military exercise with the US andEuropean nations and the Indo-US nucleardeal. The book focuses on i) effective imple-mentation of foreign policy and diversion ofall resource and energy in that process in or-der to gain success at the international level;ii) de-escalation of tensions with the imme-diate neighbours and iii) striking of properbalance with the major powers which includesRussia, Japan, Iran, and growing major pow-ers like China.

Ravi Prasad Narayanan discusses the im-portance of the micro-constituents of India’sdecision making process which displays newfacets to be taken into account while analysingforeign policy. He discusses the case of Indiaand Bangladesh relations within this frame-work. This chapter is based on three hypoth-eses which highlight i) the domestic condi-tions which shapes the foreign policy of thecountry with coalition politics at the Centre;ii) rise of regional political parties and theirimpact in the form of engaging the Centre onpolicy issues related to neighbours in termsof adopting postures often contradictory tothe official policy, and iii) bargain on foreignpolicy matters between the Centre and thestates where the State is seen as a zone of con-testation which the author describes as adouble-edged sword that is leading to greaterpluralism in Indian foreign policy. The au-thor sums up by analysing that in the Indiancontext the basic unit and linkages is a highlycontested domain, where the individual andthe institutional actors arbitrate, negotiate and

adopt positions that may be at variance withthe overall national interest of the state.

The chapter on India’s position on grow-ing global environment concerns highlightsthe need for India to strike a balance betweenthose concerns and national interest.

‘Nuclear Diplomacy: From Apartheid toMulti-Alignment’ highlights the policy shiftand the problem which may put India in adifficult position due to adversarial and com-peting relations with its core partners likeUSA, France, Russia, Japan, Australia, Chinaand a few of the Central Asian countries. In-dia needs to adopt a policy of maintainingequidistance from each of its partners in or-der to avoid the rise of bloc politics whichmay prove to be counter-productive for itsforeign policy. The Indian diaspora is seen asan important factor in enhancing nationalinterest by furthering ties.

Section two concentrates on India’s rela-tions with the major powers of the world. Thepaper on changing trends in USA and India’sstrategic relations focuses on the reasons forthe paradigm shift in US approach towardsIndia and Pakistan. The author states that thereason for this is the growing economic andmilitary power of India on one hand and grow-ing economic and political instability of Paki-stan on the other. He prescribes that India’sinterest lies in strengthening ties with the US.The chapter on EU and India partnershipfocuses on the positive partnership developed


between the two over a period of time in termsof shared values, commitment to democracy,pluralism, multicentralism, human rights andreligious freedom. This work importantly high-lights the cooperation between the two in thesphere of counter-terrorism, cyber-security,and counter-piracy measures along with thecore areas like trade, energy, water,bioresource, innovation, health research, com-munication and technology. The paper onIndia-Russia ties talks about the mutual good-will which has withstood the test of the time.The work on India and Africa is a reflectionupon how India plays a crucial role in thegrowth and development in Africa.

The work by Amit Kumar Gupta on In-dia and China describes how despite com-peting geo-political interests both the statesare cooperating in the economic arena as bothhave emerged as key players in the interna-tional economy. The chapter on India-Japanrelations by Mohammed Badrul Alam recog-nizes that the cooperation and engagementbetween the two states cannot be sustainedon a convenience, episodic and transactionalbasis but rather that it has to be firmly evalu-ated on strategic and security terms. Thechapter uses the theoretical tool and placesthe analysis within the broad realist theoreti-cal discourse of IR. The paper on South EastAsia highlights India’s ‘Look East policy’ and

the major shift which took place especiallyafter the 1991 phase. This chapter is impor-tant in the sense that it highlights the policyshift and India’s realization of the opportu-nity to scale up economic growth as a wholeand develop a region which has been neglectedfor quite some time.

The third section about India and the Mus-lim world is important as it highlights howIndia can boost its economic ties with WestAsia and seek mutual cooperation on the issuesof concern. The chapter on Iran focuses on howIndia can strengthen its economic ties with thegeo-strategic power of Central and West Asia.The author also urges the two countries to re-orient their foreign policies for the benefit ofeach other. The potential areas for bilateraltrade such as oilseeds, fruits, minerals, fuel, ma-chinery and instruments and as many as 12more areas for cooperation on trade matters arehighlighted (p. 231). In the chapter on Af-ghanistan the author urges that India shouldhelp Afghanistan in its process of reconstruc-tion and establishment of democracy. Thiswould not only help in securing India’s inter-est within Afghanistan but also limit Pakistanmanoeuvring religious fundamentalism andterrorism as state policy.

The last section covers the immediateneighbours of India. The chapter by VeenaKukreja covers crucial issues like the Pakistan

factor, the rise of Islamist violence and inter-nal security threat in Pakistan in the wake ofthe US withdrawal of forces from Afghani-stan impending in 2014. The author holdsthat this provides an opportunity for Indiafor cooperation with Pakistan. The next paperemphasizes the need for India to strengthenits ties with China along with maintainingstrategic autonomy from the US or any otherpower. The last chapter of this section evalu-ates the geostrategic position of Bhutan andNepal and its importance for India. Relationswith Bhutan gained momentum in the areasof hydropower development, information andcommunication technology, health, industry,education, culture, and trade relations. Bhutanwith its strategic location is going to be a cru-cial factor in Indo-China relations and it willplay a very important role in India’s securityinterest. Changes in Indo-China relations willhave its impact on Indo-Bhutan relations.

A separate chapter analysing India’s for-eign policy within a theoretical frameworkwould have provided depth to the book. A pa-per on India’s role in the United Nations andits bid to be a permanent member of the su-pranational body could have been highlighted.

Tapan Biswal is Associate Professor in the De-

partment of Political Science, School of Open Learn-

ing, University of Delhi, Delhi.


Contextualizing Bilateral Relations

Srikanth Kondapalli

ASYMMETRICAL THREAT PERCEPTIONS IN INDIA-CHINA RELATIONS

By Fang Tien-Sze. Series Editors: Sumit Gangulyand E.Sridharan

Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2014,pp. Xvi+247, `795.00

Various studies recently by the WorldBank, Goldman Sachs, Citibank and

others have indicated that China and Indiaare poised to enhance their economic profilefurther in the international arena. The 2011International Comparison Program of theWorld Bank suggested that while the UnitedStates is still the largest economy in theworld, China and India have risen to becomethe second and third largest economies. Ofcourse, there are several riders—includingthe mismatch with the per-capita indicators,as with the infrastructure, human resourcesdevelopment indicators and the like of thesetwo Asian countries in comparison to the ad-vanced countries in the world. Also, it wouldbe misleading to suggest that all advancedeconomies are powerful countries in theworld. Japan is an example as it stood sec-ond in the international economic matrix forseveral decades. A more plausible measure-ment that is currently in vogue could be thecomprehensive national power (CNP) whichincludes a series of measurements of a coun-try. Indeed, in the CNP rankings China andIndia are still lagging behind compared tothe US, Russia and European countries.

While their respective CNPs are increas-ing by all accounts, it is stated by several au-thors recently that the CNP differential be-tween India and China is also increasing. Thishas interesting consequences for both the bi-lateral relations between India and China, andto the regional and international security. Thisis broadly the subject matter of the book un-der review. What is more interesting is thatthis book is written by a Taiwanese, possiblythe first from that region. Flowing from hisPh.D. thesis at the London School of Eco-nomics & Political Science, Fang Tien-szeanalyses the growing asymmetries between In-dia and China, specifically the threat percep-tions. Fang explores all the major issues thatconfront the bilateral relations, viz., nuclearfactor, Tibet, territorial dispute, regional andglobal interactions of these emerging Asiancountries. He also combines in a unique waysome of the neo-realist tenets in internationalrelations theory with that of constructivist no-tions. The basic assumptions of this growingasymmetry in power are that the Chinesegrowth rates are sustainable, that India willnot be able to catch up with China, and thatChina will successfully address its domesticconcerns.

Many a scholar across the globe has writ-ten extensively about the bilateral relationsof India and China. There are several workscomparing the power differential betweenIndia and China. However, the book underreview is of a different genre—it is thematicand discusses the core issues that affect thebilateral relations. It offers a theoretical ex-planation of the bilateral context with secu-rity dilemmas as the main variable. It at-tempts to blend both neo-realism andconstructivism in weaving the narrative onIndia-China relations based on the asym-metrical threat perceptions and power dif-ferentials. From a neo-realist perspective,mention should be made of the pioneeringresearch of John Garver, Mohan Malik andrecently by Jeff Smith. Indeed, Garver, in anarticle in 2002 referred to the central themeof the book under review, viz., China loomslarger in the Indian security calculus thanvice versa because of the growing asymme-tries between the two countries. Fang inother words takes a cue from such writingsbut blends these with constructivist notionsof international relations (p.3).

The thrust of the book is that due tohuge and ever-growing asymmetries in powerpotential and capabilities between India andChina, the former had been reluctant to as-sert itself against the latter on issues relatedto the diplomatic fallout of the nuclear ex-plosion in 1998, Tibet, territorial disputeand others. However, Fang suggests that In-dia has been nursing grievances against itsnorthern neighbour and that the bilateralrelations exhibit a ‘culture of rivalry’ (p.127).Some of the unique features of the bookworth mentioning are the author’s grasp ofthe subject and his delineation of the pro-cesses of the bilateral relations between Indiaand China. This needed copious and exten-sive consultation of both documents andChinese and Indian texts, interviews withparticipants and the like. Secondly the dis-cussion on the Tibet issue between the twocountries is outstanding, although the au-thor sometimes exaggerates China’s fears onthis issue as with the nuclear fallout since1998. Another glaring omission is that thereis no discussion on any views related to Chinaon diplomatic reciprocities with India on theTibet issue. Nevertheless, Fang clearly iden-tifies the vulnerabilities for both India andChina on the Tibet issue.

While the author had tried to do justiceby exploring extensively Chinese and Indiansources and reflected on major problems andprospects in the bilateral relations, as a Tai-wanese, it would have been interesting if theauthor had looked again at the Taiwan ques-tion in the India-China relations. In 1950,after three months of gruelling negotiationsbetween the officials of India and China, the‘India Model’ on Taiwan was adopted. Thisbecame a selling point for China to othercountries on its Taiwan policy. Although In-dia did not receive any reciprocal gesturesfrom China on this issue—as with other is-sues—given Fang’s understanding of the sub-ject and his professional work at Delhi inthe Taiwan Mission, reflections on the so-called Taiwan model could have been reward-ing. Secondly, the Republic of China (whichshifted to Taiwan in 1949) had in its Con-stitution (drawn in 1924) mentioned thatit has jurisdiction over Tibet, Mongolia andXinjiang. Specifically in the light of the hun-dredth anniversary of the 1914 Shimla Con-vention, a re-look at the McMahon Line(drawn at this time)—in dispute betweenIndia and China currently—and on Tibetissue in general could have been timely.

Srikanth Kondapalli is Professor in Chinese Stud-

ies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.


Contours of a Bilateral Relationship

Vyjayanti Raghavan

INDIA AND THE REPUBLIC OF KOREA:ENGAGED DEMOCRACIES

By Skand R. TayalRoutledge, Delhi, 2014, pp. 294, `795.00

When, in 1977, I got a Korean Govern-ment scholarship to study Korean at

the Seoul National University, everyone inthe family wanted to know where it was. Amap was consulted and silence followed.There literally was nothing to be said.

Since then Korea has come a long way,of course, from being a war-torn country witha GDP of less than USD 100 in the late 1950sto one with over USD 25,000 in 2014; froma small country which confined its foreignpolicy to only the region to one that hasstarted playing an active and assertive role inglobal affairs; from one which was not evenconsulted by the big powers when decisionsregarding its future was being discussed inthe Cairo and Yalta Conferences to one whichholds the G 20 and Nuclear Summit Meet-ing.

In spite of the huge and extraordinarysocial, economic and political changes thatKorea had wrought in just a generation andhalf, it has remained a minor player in India’seyes. But now India is seeking its support invarious fora, including APEC, ASEAN and

for India’s candidature in the UNSC. Ko-rean white goods dominate the Indian mar-ket, as do its electronics and cars.

As a regular visitor to that country for thelast 37 years, it is clear that South Korea’s viewof India has also undergone a lot of change.Until not so long ago, India was admiredmainly for being the land of Sakyamuni Bud-dha and for the references by RabindranathTagore to the exceedingly harsh Japanese co-lonial rule (1910-45) in Korea, and MahatmaGandhi and Pandit Nehru.

But its policy of maintaining equidis-tance between North and South Korea andits policy of nonalignment did nothing tofurther the relationship. India and Korea re-mained distantly friendly. But that, too, haschanged now. Bilateral relations are notmarred by bad historical memories, territo-rial disputes or even economic competition.This has helped the two countries to forgeseveral common interests.

Korea has invested several billion dollarshere and will soon be investing billions more.Trade between the two countries has gonefrom $2 billion in 2000 to $14 billion in2013. The two countries signed a Compre-hensive Economic Partnership Agreement in2011. Defence cooperation between themhas been increasing. Korea has been espe-cially active in the field of education in In-

dia, funding literally hundreds of scholar-ships for Indian students to Korea for coursesof different durations.

This very timely book by AmbassadorSkand Tayal traces and examines the contoursof the various facets of their bilateral rela-tions. The author was a career diplomat whoserved as India’s Ambassador to South Koreaduring 2008-11, a period which witnesseda ‘quantum jump’ in the bilateral relationsbetween the two countries. Tayal ‘contrib-uted directly to the process’.

Happily, the book is not the usual col-lection of anecdotes and episodes of Ambas-sador Tayal’s last posting, but a serious work.He has confined his personal assessment ofKorean society and people to the Epilogue.

While there have been earlier works, bothsole authored books as well as edited vol-umes that have dealt with this subject, theyhave dealt with either just one aspect of therelationship or provided a general overview.There has not so far been a work that looksat all aspects of the relations from the earli-est times to the present in such fine detail,including the people to people interactions,which, however, have been meagre.

For instance the details of all Korean andIndian Buddhist monks who visited eachother’s countries between the first and eighthcentury CE, the exchange of letters betweena Korean nationalist Kim Sung-soo andGandhiji which was discovered in our Na-tional Archives by one of the scholars, theextent of influence of Gandhian philosophyon Korean freedom fighters, or the travel-ogues of the Indian journalist Shiv PrasadGupt and his comparison of traditional classdivisions in Korean society with the Indiancaste system, all find mention in Tayal’s book.They make an interesting read as well as be-ing a great source of information.

The book also adds a new dimension tothe detailed interaction between the two gov-ernments. Tayal has, through his privileges ofaccess to official documents, made good useof them. The minutest reference to, or ex-changes with, South Korea have been noticedby him. Unclassified documents have beenused to great effect. It is evident that the bookis a culmination of a lot of effort as Tayal haslooked closely not only at the National Ar-chives but also consulted and cited all workdone so far on any aspect of the subject. There-fore, it is also a good source for references.

There are excellent insights into the na-ture of personalities and personal interactions.Many little known facts are revealed. PrimeMinister Nehru’s interaction with SyngmanRhee, the first President of the Republic ofKorea (South Korea’s official name), SoniaGandhi’s visit to South Korea to receive aHuman Rights award and her meeting withKim Dae-jung, the celebration of MahatmaGandhi’s birthday at a well-known Cathedralin Central Seoul, and such others. It also looksat the ‘unholy alliance’ between North Koreaand Pakistan which impacts India as much asit does South Korea.

Details of India’s involvement in the af-fairs of the peninsula during the Korean Warand its helplessness in preventing its divi-sion are broadly known. But the fact thatthe Chinese premier, Chou En-Lai, hadpassed on a clear warning to the internationalcommunity and the UN forces via the In-dian Ambassador to Peking, Sardar K.M.Panniker, that China would get involved inthe war if they crossed the 38th parallel isnot very well known. Nor is the sense of frus-tration, expressed in the words of K.P.S.Menon, the then Indian Ambassador to theUN in the following words: ‘Korea had beencaught in the play of forces beyond our con-trol. In the clash of these crosscurrents, swift,ideological, remorseless, one slice of Korea


was carried away to the Left, and another tothe Right. We tried to find some middlecourse where this frail bark, pieced together,could once more sail gracefully as she haddone for centuries. But we failed.’

The chapters are ordered sequentially pe-riod-wise. The balance in some places couldhave been better. For example, a few, coveringlong periods of time (1953-1972) are dis-missed in a few pages (pp.61-65) while somethat cover shorter periods of time (2003-2012)get greater weightage (pp.106-140). But thisin a sense would have been unavoidable as itaptly reflects the ‘Period of Apathy’ and ‘TheEvolution of Strategic Partnership’ (as thechapters are titled) between the two.

The conclusion charts out the various po-tential for future growth in the relationship.Tayal says that there are ‘concerns that thegrowing Chinese economic and military ca-pabilities would propel China to work for ac-quiring such a position in Asian politics,though at present it has been projecting itsgrowth as “peaceful” or “harmonious”. SouthKorea and India both feel the need to worktogether and also with other countries to cre-ate disincentives for China to do so. There areseveral other security and strategic concerns,which are shared by India and South Korea.The trajectory of their rising bilateral relationsis a manifestations of the increasing realiza-tion of their common perspectives, which ledto forging a bilateral strategic partnership in2010 for working together in the “Asiancentury”…But the ROK would need to bemore forthcoming in the transfer of technol-ogy and co-production in India to make anyheadway. Israel has learnt how to trust Indiaand does not hesitate in sharing vital technol-ogy and the ROK would need to go on thesame route to crack the huge Indian defencemarket. Recent reports about purchase ofeight advanced minesweepers by India fromthe South Korean firm, Kangnam Corpora-tion, are a sign of the immense potential inthis area.’

To sum up, this book adds great value tothe existing literature and will be a useful ref-erence for those working on Indo-Korea rela-tions, an informative read for all those engagedin bilateral trade, commerce and investmentas well as for those caught in the Korean Waveor the Indian Wave in the two countries.

One must now hope that someone whoknows the Korean language will examine thesources in the Korean National Archives andpresent the Korean processes and perceptionof these interactions.

Vyjayanti Raghavan is Chairperson and Profes-

sor at the Centre for Korean Studies, Jawaharlal

Nehru University, New Delhi.

A Chronicle of Egypt’s Spring

S. Samuel C. Rajiv

REVOLUTION 2.0: THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE ISGREATER THAN THE PEOPLE IN POWER

By Wael GhonimThompson Press India, 2012, pp. 308,

` 599.00

The memoir under review is a chronicleof Egypt’s ‘Arab Spring’ from an author

who not only had a ringside view of theevents as they unfolded but played animportant part in channelling the people’spent up emotions. It is a powerful testimonyto the impact that ordinary but conscientiouscitizens can play in determining the courseof their nation’s history. Wael Ghonim’sonline activism, sparked by the murder of afellow citizen Khaled Said by security forcesin broad daylight on June 6, 2010, hadlimited aims. This was to expose gross humanrights violations being committed by thesecurity apparatus of the Mubarak regime andensure that the perpetrators of the crime facedjustice.

The ‘Kullena Khaled Said’ [We are allKhaled Said] (KKS) webpage started by the

author generated a large following from acritical section of the population that was fedup with such atrocities and lack of account-ability from the government coupled withsuppression of information related to suchissues by state-controlled media. The authorwas the originator of novel nonviolent protesttactics like the ‘Silent Stand’ which enjoinedEgyptians to stand in protest along thebeachfronts and major roads in importantcities like Cairo and Alexandria to bringpressure on the regime to act against theperpetrators.

Four such peaceful protests were heldwith the fourth one held on July 23 (theanniversary of the 1952 revolution) dubbedthe ‘Revolution of Silence’. Ghonim acknow-ledges the impact that Mahatma Gandhi hadon his philosophy when he states thatGandhi ‘is certainly one of my heroes’ (p.107). He asserts that Gandhi’s triumphagainst the British Empire assured him that‘great battles could be fought and wonwithout violence’ (p. 108).

It is pertinent to note that the significantresponse such tactics generated from ordinaryEgyptians were despite the fact that theauthor himself remained anonymous (inorder not to allow the authorities to nip hisactivism in the bud) and was based in Dubai

with a cushy job with one of the most high-profile American multinational companies,Google. Ghonim’s awakened conscience onseeing the picture of the battered body ofSaid however spurred him to action to coaxhis fellow countrymen to shed their ‘fear’and become politically confident.

Apart from the brutal manner of the deathof Said, the bomb blast outside the Two SaintsChurch on January 1, 2011 in Alexandriawhich led to the death of 21 people wasanother defining moment that quickened theauthor’s and the nation’s emotions. While themainstream Egyptian media shied away frompublicizing such attacks, the KKS webpagetook the lead in publishing photos andmessages pledging allegiance to uphold thereligious fabric of the country.

In the aftermath of the death ofMohammad Bouazizi on January 4, 2011and the subsequent developments in Tunisialeading to the flight of the long-time leaderBen Ali to Riyadh, Egyptian protests tooacquired a sharper tone, with the ouster ofMubarak himself eventually becoming theprime focus. Ghonim gave voice to suchtendencies when he suggested that theupcoming National Police Day on January25, 2011 be marked as the ‘Day of Revolu-tion against Torture, Poverty, Corruption andUnemployment’ (p. 136).

Egypt’s dire socio-economic conditionsin contrast to the iron control exercised over


the political and social life of the people bythe Mubarak regime and his NationalDemocratic Party (NDP) were a sure recipefor revolution. Ghonim points out that outof Egypt’s population of 80 million, threemillion were unemployed; 48 million werein extreme poverty; 30 million were sufferingfrom depression; more than 100,000 suicideattempts were recorded in 2009, resultingin the death of 5,000 people; 12 millionwere without shelter; high infant mortalityrate; and that the country was ranked at the115th position out of 139 countries in theCorruption Perception Index(p. 165).

Ghonim combined his marketingbackground and technological savvy tochannel the people’s emotions and anger totry to ensure that the January 25, 2011demonstrations would count. Ghonim andother activists including those associated withsuch groups like the April 6 Movement(named after the events surrounding thepublicizing of a textile workers strike in 2008through the internet) put forth a series ofdemands including the repeal of the draconianEmergency Law (which allowed security forcesto arrest and detain anyone without recourseto a trial for close to 6 months), removal ofthe then Interior Minister, a two-term limiton the presidency, among others.

It is pertinent to note that the organizersinsisted that the protests would be peacefuland they even agreed on a handful of pre-decided chants while participating in theprotests in order not to provoke the securityforces. Ghonim’s and the organizers’ methodshave echoes of Gene Sharp (a great admirerof Gandhi), though the American intellectual

called the ‘father of nonviolent struggle’ isnot mentioned in the book. In a sensehowever, while the methods championedby Ghonim and his online activists couldbe characterized as ‘principled nonviolence’,they had a strategic impact given theeventual resignation of President Mubarak.1

In the aftermath of the January 25protests, Ghonim was arrested/kidnappedin the early hours of January 28 and washeld in captivity for 11 days. It isremarkable that despite his harsh prisonconditions, the author makes a distinctionbetween the security personnel whokidnapped him, the system and individualsthat perpetrated such illegal detentions andafter his release directs his anger against thelatter. Ghonim cites one of his prison guardsexpressing appreciation ‘knowing thatEgypt had people like me’ (p. 247).

Despite his significant involvement in‘Egypt’s Spring’ and the domestic andforeign media portraying him as the ‘faceof the revolution’, the author makes it apoint to stress that he is not in any sense a‘hero’ but instead praises the ‘martyrs whogave blood for their dreams’ (p. 265). Theauthor asserts that with the ouster ofMubarak on February 11, 2011, Egyptiansachieved a crucial ‘first mission’ (p. 291).Subsequent developments have reinforcedGhonim’s view that Egypt is ‘still a longway from a fully established democracy’ (p.292). He however asserts that the Egyptians‘will never again put up with anotherPharaoh’ (p. 292).

Ghonim characterizes Egypt’s churningas ‘Revolution 2.0’, being a ‘spontaneousmovement led by the wisdom of the crowd’in contrast to erstwhile revolutions, whichhave been variously led by charismaticleaders who were politically savvy and even‘military geniuses’ (p. 293). While thisdistinction could seem overly simplistic,Ghonim’s memoir is proof of the power oftechnology to bring a critical mass of peopleinto contact and direct their energies on tothe streets, where of course the fate of leaderssuch as Mubarak was eventually decided.

Footnotes

1See Maria J. Stephan and EricaChenoweth, ‘Why Civil Resistance Works:The Strategic Logic of Non-ViolentConflict’, International Security, Vol. 33,No. 1 (Summer 2008), pp. 7–44.

S. Samuel C. Rajiv is Associate Fellow at the

Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA),

New Delhi.

Book News

India and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Re-gime: The Perennial Outlier by A. VinodKumar presents India as a unique case surviv-ing outside the regime’s overarching system,as a nuclear-capable state with a prolongedrecord of resistance (and selective adherence),but ending up seeking opportunities to en-gage with its normative structures.Cambridge University Press, Delhi, 2014,pp. 233, `745.00

India’s Military Modernization: Challenges andProspects edited by Rajesh Basrur, Ajaya KumarDas and Manjeet S. Pardesi, provides an in-depeth analysis of the shift in India’s strategicorientation from a defensive worldview to aconfident emerging power, and India’s re-sponses to a complex and changing military-strategic environment.Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2014,pp. 311, `950.00


Some Workable Solutions

Suhasini Haidar

THE SYRIA DILEMMAEdited by Nader Hashemi & Danny Postel

Boston Review, Cambridge, 2013, pp. 272,price not stated.

Simply put, there is no good option inSyria. Not only has the time passed for

the international community to be able toeffect an internal solution to the crisis insidethe country, the geopolitical dynamics out-side Syria are also changing at a rapid pace.So even if there was a good solution today, itwould likely be dated and unworkable by thetime it is ready to be implemented. The edi-tors of The Syria Dilemma should be congratu-lated, nonetheless, for their ambitious projectof bringing in a number of workable solu-tions, incorporating the varied views of au-thors, foreign policy analysts, and thinkers onwhat the US can and should do next.

The essays, written over the course of2013, deal primarily with the question of in-tervention, with many of the authors askingat what point in the crisis, where 140,000people have been killed, more than a millionmade homeless, and the Assad regime remainsstrong, would the US move in to intervene?Turning over that question is a battery of thebest minds in the US on the subject, fromthe Time Editor at Large Fareed Zakaria andABC’s Charles Glass, who don’t favour anyintervention, to Obama’s special envoy ValiNasr, Syrian Centre Director Radwan Zadieh,and Human Rights Watch Chief Kenneth

Roth, who push for a ‘humanitarian inter-vention’ that arms rebels, sets up a no-fly zone,to the famous New America President AnneMarie Slaughter and University of DenverProfessor Tom Farer who advocate a more ro-bust intervention by the US to stop the kill-ings. Farer goes as far as to recommend whathe calls ‘A visit to Damascus’ by ‘Shock andAwe’, including having US forces ‘rain a care-fully discriminating death on the offices ofpower in Syria’, and build a coalition of Arabstates and clerics to convince Russia that USis prepared to use ‘decimating force’ with orwithout UN Security Council resolution.

While the US administration has vacil-lated between all three options, all the essaysin The Syrian Dilemma are worth reading be-cause there are no fence-sitters there.

Even the editors make it clear where theystand over what they call ‘The Killing Fieldsof Syria’. In his essay, Director at the Centrefor Middle East Studies, Nader Hashemiwrites, ‘Military intervention, as regrettableand complicated as it may be, is the only wayto stop Assad’s killing machine.’ Despite theirstrong arguments though, it should have beenquite clear by the end of 2013, that the US isnot going to intervene.

To begin with, President Obama’s prece-dent in turning to the Congress for clearanceto strike in Syria after the US accused Assadof using chemical weapons was clearly a coverfor the US administration’s reluctance for suchan action. Secondly, it is now all too obviousthat the bigger threat to the Syrian peoplecomes from the Jihadist faction of rebels, thatbegan by attacking Assad’s forces, went on tobomb civilian areas loyal to Assad, then be-gan to decimate the original (secular) rebelsof the Free Syrian Army, and now are killingoff all challenge to their version of a Shari’astate. Since January 2014, more than 3,300people have been killed in direct clashes be-tween what’s left of the Free Syrian Army, theAl-Qaeda linked Nusra front, and the mostruthless extremist group called ISIL (IslamicState of Iraq and the Levant). In a situationall too evocative of the US support to theTaliban in the 1980s, to help such groupsthat are already carrying out mass beheadingsenforcing a very strict Shari’a that oppressesboth women and minorities, would only leadto another Afghanistan-like quagmire, not tomention a safe haven for terrorists that willeventually target the US itself. As Marc Lynchpoints out in his remarkably prescient piece,‘Shopping Option C for Syria: Against Arm-ing the Rebels,’ ‘It is difficult to produce asingle example in modern history of a strat-egy of arming rebels actually succeeding.’

Finally, the situation outside Syria haschanged dramatically. For the past few yearsAssad’s regime has derived support from Iranand the Hezbollah, while the rebels broughtin arms from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and otherGulf states. But in the past few months, thetables have turned. The US and Iran are nowin nuclear talks that hope to see some sort ofan agreement later this year, and are unlikelyto allow action in Syria to cloud that. Mean-while Saudi Arabia and Qatar, the two mainorganizers and backers for the rebels, whohelped the US and the West channel aid to theSyrian opposition, are now at odds with eachother. As a result, Saudi officials have taken aU-turn on arming those groups, and in March,Riyadh even took the startling step of declar-ing a ban on the Muslim Brotherhood, ISIL,and the Nusra front, and calling all Saudi citi-zens fighting in those now deemed ‘terrorist’groups to return home or face jail terms.

If the book The Syria Dilemma suffers froma flaw, it is that the essays aren’t arranged inany particular order, and the reader may have

benefitted from seeing the arguments set outclearly in order of the conclusion proferred: from non-intervention to full-scale interven-tion. Also, the authors seem to labour too longon comparisons between the possible action inSyria, and US action (or inaction) in other coun-tries. Director at the Brookings Institute inDoha Shadi Hamid for example says that theUS’s mistakes in Iraq is the reason more peopledo not favour an intervention, ‘Hoping to atonefor our sins in Iraq, we have overlearned thelessons of the last war,’ he concludes with somedisappointment. In the same vein, Richard Falkpoints out that, ‘Two wrongs don’t make a right.NATO’s flagrant abuse of the UN mandate forLibya should certainly not be redressed at theexpense of the Syrian people….This kind of“compensation” for NATOs ultra vires behav-ior in Libya is morally unacceptable and po-litically imprudent.’ And Editor NaderHashemi demands more action because he says,‘The Assad regime is now in the same moralcategory as the Bosnian Serb war criminalRaadovan Karadzic and Rwanda’s Hutu Gen-erals.’

In fact, Syria is not Libya, Iraq, Afghani-stan, Bosnia or Rwanda, as it is hard to ex-trapolate from any one of those to another.The single common thread perhaps is thatno matter what course the US chooses to adoptthere, it is unlikely to bring Syria to a peace-ful conclusion, and will probably, as it has inLibya, Iraq and Afghanistan, only worsen thelot of the people in those countries with itsactions.

Suhasini Haidar is Diplomatic Editor, The Hindu.


Conflict Resolution As Janus-faced?

Ali Ahmed

WHEN COUNTERINSURGENCY WINS: SRILANKA’S DEFEAT OF THE TAMIL TIGERS

By Ahmed S. HashimFoundation Books, New Delhi, 2013, pp. 267,

`850.00

The author has impressive credentials.With a doctorate from MIT, he has

taught at the US Naval War College and lec-tured at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He iscurrently Associate Professor at theRajaratnam School of International Studies(RSIS), Nanyang Technological University,Singapore. The catch is that an American ofTurkish-Egyptian origin, he served threeterms advising the US command in Iraq af-ter the fall of Saddam. His earlier book In-surgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq car-ried his impression of that conflict. His ser-vice in Iraq perhaps explains the term ‘de-feat’ in the title.

To him, Sri Lanka’s ‘defeat’ of the LTTEis without a doubt ‘the first counter insur-gency victory of the twenty-first century’(p.2). This fixation with ‘victory’ and ‘de-feat’ is a conceptual error that Americanshave been guilty of across many conflict the-atres. It can be be attributed to their strate-gic thinkers, such as the author; but then,the author’s interest itself can be attributedto socialization in the American school of warfighting.

In all fairness to the author, it must beacknowledged that he has taken care to ca-veat his title and effusive introductory linescovering the death of Prabhakaran by high-lighting that military victory is but a steptowards conflict resolution. His concluding

chapter does justice to the miles that remainfor the Sri Lankan state to traverse out of thepost-conflict environment it is in. He bringsout the important point that victory can belost in case the politics does not keep pace.That this is not happening in Sri Lanka isapparent with its latest stricture in the UNHuman Rights Council which decided witha vote of 23 to 12 and 12 abstentions toinvestigate Sri Lanka’s record during the fi-nal stages of the conflict. It is clear thatPrabhakaran may yet have the last laugh withthe three Rajapakses—the President, theDefence Minister and his advisor—possiblybeing arraigned in front of the InternationalCriminal Court at curtains to the conflict.

That would indeed be a befitting end,not least from poetic justice point of view butas instruction to governments that watched,and prefer to continue to do so, with handsfirmly behind their backs, not excluding theIndian Government. As the regional power,it is curious that Ahmed barely notes India’srole. India was in the midst of its last elec-

tions in 2009. This was the critical ingredi-ent in Rajapakse’s timing of his offensive. AnIndian Government distracted by nationalelections, fearful of the implications for theTamil vote and encumbered by the Gandhifamily’s grip on the ruling party, was unable—and perhaps unwilling—to force moderationon the Sri Lankans.

The latter is more likely given India’s ex-tensive commitment to training of the SriLankan army for almost two decades, largely,incidentally in conventional operations.Knowing Tamil sensitivities, voiced now andthen by their competing politicians,Karunanidhi and Jayalalitha, India was averseto large scale counter insurgency training. Ittherefore concentrated on training the SriLankan Army extensively on conventionaloperations. This turned out to be very use-ful as the LTTE itself transformed into a ‘hy-brid’ force with capabilities across the insur-gency spectrum from terror through guer-rilla tactics to conventional operations,brought out very well by the author. How-ever, his coverage of the Sri Lankan Army’stransformation neglects the Indian hand init. (Incidentally, this reviewer was in the veryfirst training team for Sri Lankans involvedin training of junior leaders by the IndianArmy as early as immediately following theexit of the IPKF from Sri Lanka.)

The book misses also a look at the LTTEperspective. Acknowledging a lack of accessto the Tamil camp, the book is unable totackle crucial questions as to why the LTTEchose to take a stand, that in the event turnedout its ‘last stand’. The author restricts him-self to apprehending a profound misreadingof the international opinion by the LTTE.The LTTE assumed international pressurefor yet another pause in fighting after it yetagain fought the Sri Lankan Army to a stand-still. In the immediate aftermath of the Bushera, this was a misreading of internationalopinion on terrorism. Also, interventions forpeace such as from Nordic countries werefatigued by the mid-decade failure of theNorwegian mission. As mentioned, India tookept a distance and the Tamil parties, di-vided in the run up to the elections, couldnot force India’s foreign policy in an inter-ventionist direction.

While true, India’s sitting on fencethen, as now, owes also, not so much to itsview of national sovereignty, as to the possi-bility of resorting to such measures in caseof any future politico-military challenge it

may itself face. Its enabling of the Sri Lankansand keeping a reticent position thereafter issupposedly for geopolitical reasons that in-clude a need to balance Chinese interest inthe Indian Ocean and Sri Lanka. However,the danger is in its learning the wrong les-sons and believing that the Sri Lankan modelholds any water in democratic societies. In-dia has left itself open for an option of simi-lar action in case any challenge acquires themagnitude of that faced by Sri Lanka.

This brings one to the core issue of theplace of violence in counter-insurgency. InClausewitzian terms, the dialectic betweentwo opposing forces, representing the willsof the two sides in conflict, is such as to tendtowards ‘absolute war’. In internal conflict,this implies an annihilatory tendency; onlyto feed the contest making for a closed loopas obtained in Sri Lanka. Allowing the mili-tary logic to take its course is what ensuresthat the politics of the conflict are lockedout, even after the opponent is overthrown,as is the case obtaining in Sri Lanka. Thismeans that a glib reversion to politics at theend of the military tryst in internal conflict,such as usually attends international conflict,is seldom possible. Therefore, to advancetheory, the expectation of reverting to poli-tics once the military prong has done its bitis fallacy. Consequently, the search for ‘vic-tory’, as has been the American lodestar overthe past decade and half, is chimera. In try-ing to use the Sri Lankan case, the author isattempting to reinforce an American-led glo-bal strategic culture.

In any case, if the problem can only befixed by a political solution—as is invariablythe case in internal conflict—then there is noneed for a military dominant interregnum. Itneeds fixing straight off, without the contestof wills and the inevitable ‘collateral damage’suffered by the human terrain of internal con-flict. In fact, it is the temptation to go for themilitary option that creates the conditions forits employment. This needs being the takeaway from the book and not what the authorhas it: a political turn once the military hasdone its bit. His take has not succeeded inIraq, where he spent time; in Afghanistan now;and—what he stops short of predicting—willnot succeed in Sri Lanka. One hopes India—sitting on the fence—is listening.

Ali Ahmed is Political Officer with the United Na-

tions Mission in the Republic of South Sudan.


A Fraught Relationship

Priyanka Singh

NO EXIT FROM PAKISTAN: AMERICA’STORTURED RELATIONSHIP WITH ISLAMABAD

By Daniel S. MarkeyCambridge University Press, Delhi, 2014,

pp. 248, `495.00

Since 2001, the United States led waron terror has consistently dominated the

regional strategic discourse. Parallel to thishas been the discourse on the ties betweenthe US and Pakistan, its long-time ally eversince its creation in 1947. The equations havebeen quite uneven, estranged at times, butnever broken completely. Beginning 2001 tothe 2011 Osama killing till date, as the USled forces prepare to withdraw, several expertshave written on the dismal state of the US-Pakistan ties. Daniel Markey, a seasoned ex-pert on the subject, shares his perspectiveunder the rather curtly titled account inspiredby Jean Paul Sartre’s work No Exit referring toa situation where two characters are caughttogether in a torturous hell like situation.Markey captures the downsides of the bilat-eral ties between the two countries and high-lights uncertainties and dilemmas at a pointwhen the US led allied forces are slated fordrastic reduction by the end of 2014.

The book presents an interesting charac-terization of Pakistan’s four faces: basket case-uneven growth, lack of development, dismalstate of infrastructure and a feudal societywhere attempts to introduce land reformshave failed repeatedly; a garrison state wherethe military is the overarching influence flour-ishing mainly on the India threat factor, thenuclear dimension and a peculiar case ofamassing huge caches of wealth; a terroristincubator—for safeguarding Islam and ideol-ogy, and how such groups pose a security chal-

lenge internally; and the rise of the youthfulidealist—in the form of political groups asImran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-e-Insaf (PTI)with an essentially reformist, radical agendaand where media has a key role.

Markey quite ably puts US-Pakistan rela-tions in a bilateral and regional perspective,lining up past compulsions and present reali-ties, which pose an immense challenge to theties. The book in several ways deviates fromthe conventional debate on US-Pakistan rela-tions where the blame is put entirely on Paki-stan for having embraced fundamentalism.Much of the current situation has to do withthe evolution of US-Pakistan relations vis-à-vis meeting geopolitical requirements in theregion. For the US, Pakistan has been the cru-cial base in the region—given Pakistan’s geo-graphical proximity to both China and Af-ghanistan, US is unlikely to forgo this. There-fore, as the book suggests, there is no easy exitfor the US from Pakistan, even though Paki-

stan has emerged as the epicentre of militantgroups targeting primarily the US led west-ern forces. The author positions his narrativeat a crucial juncture from where Pakistancould possibly be rescued, for if not, it couldturn into serious disaster for the US objec-tives in the region.

Towards the end Markey draws out anddebates three policy choices for the US: firstly,defensive insulation where the US could de-vise a multi-pronged strategy to secure itselffrom terrorist threats emanating from insidePakistan, insulating homeland security andemploying a better drone use strategy. Sec-ondly, military-first approach with a focus oncore security issues and third, a comprehen-sive, rather ambitious agenda of building aconcrete partnership by assisting Pakistanachieve political stability and bring about fun-damental shift in the social landscape there.All three options, the author recommends,must be balanced out suggesting that the USshould ‘get on with it’ (p.237).

Markey’s account is first hand given hisexperience as a State Department policy plan-ning staff official. He describes the US-Paki-stan relationship as one which has brought‘more frustrations than successes’ (p. 22). Hisaccount reflects quite clearly on the overpow-ering frustrations in the minds of the US policymakers who face a serious dilemma of callingPakistan a partner in war against terrorism,knowing well Pakistan’s inherent affinity tomilitant groups over the decades. As is truefor most of the literature on the equationsbetween the US and Pakistan, coloured withwestern biases, Markey’s account is repletewith hard, though clichéd facts of how theAmerican aid flowing into Pakistan has gonedown the drain making little difference tosocio-economic standards or to contain thesurge of militancy.

Markey explains acts of omission andcommission, holding both the US and Paki-stan accountable for the present state of af-fairs. Towards the end, while commentingon the regional imperatives, the author pur-veys India and China as the crucial regionaldenominators. The book assesses why it maynot be easy for the US to exit Pakistan evenafter it withdraws from Afghanistan. Someform of continuing US role-tangibles as eco-nomic assistance packages, capacity build-ing or advisory is essential for Pakistan’s fu-ture stability and peace. It is imprudent tosuggest that the US deserts Pakistan at a criti-cal juncture—while it battles internally with

mushrooming militant sanctuaries and facesflak internationally from all quarters for shel-tering Bin Laden on its soil.

The current situation in Pakistan needsto be analysed in the light of certain hardfacts. A lot of what is happening in Pakistanhas to do with the US strategic requirementsduring the Cold War years and the post 9/11 period. While the US forces forged aheadwith the war on terror making initial gains,they disregarded the fact that the fundamen-talist forces from Afghanistan were percolat-ing towards the eastern frontiers into Paki-stan. These forces within Pakistan strength-ened over time and now pose the biggestchallenge to American objectives in the re-gion. The book ends on a rather optimisticnote arguing that Pakistan ‘is not a lostcause’(p. 235). It advises a degree of prag-matism for the US while expecting quick re-sults from Pakistan. The author suggests thatthe US needs to balance out its expectationswith the harsh complexities inhibiting Paki-stan. In other words, he advocates long term,consistent commitment to stabilize Pakistanand rid it of extremist forces.

The book encapsulates sixty-odd years ofUS-Pakistan ties, unfolding sequentially thestages in the uneven but perennial bilateralrelationship. The historical background por-tion of the book runs the risk of appearingrepetitive. Nonetheless, it is always relevantto begin with a clear context in order to un-derstand the core arguments and assertionsmade by the author.

Priyanka Singh is with the Institute for Defence Stud-

ies and Analyses, New Delhi.


Multiple Realities Under the Lens

Samreen Mushtaq

KASHMIR’S NARRATIVES OF CONFLICT:IDENTITY LOST IN SPACE AND TIME

By Manisha GangaharIndian Institute of Advanced Study, Simla, 2013,

pp. 173, `450.00

The accounts on Kashmir will generallytell stories from a particular prism,

explaining that either there is no problemand that peace has returned to the Valleyafter a violent phase, or keeping in mind theglobal concern for human rights, that theKashmir issue is nothing but a case of HumanRights violations that needs to be addressed.For many of those ‘outside’, ‘Kashmir isHappy’1 and you’ll fall in love with it. Forthose ‘inside’, the story is darker, one thatnot many will dare venture into.

When Manisha Gangahar’s book startswith a statement as powerful as ‘Aapka India,Hamaara Kashmir’ (Your India, OurKashmir), you realize here is one of those worksthat has perhaps dared enter the field whichthe veil of nationalism otherwise makes oneso conveniently ignore. The work emphasizesquestions surrounding Kashmiri identity, howKashmiris define themselves, to what extentthey relate to the idea of Kashmiriyat and howfeasible this idea is. Combining theoreticalperspectives with writings and cinematicworks specific to Kashmir, she looks intofactors like violence, politics, power,nationalism, democracy, religion and theirinterplay to give the Kashmir conflict the

shape that it has acquired today. Sheacknowledges the mass sentiment in Kashmirbeing anti-India, the Indian state being lookedat as the colonizer and how it has used coercivemeasures to silence the voices from Kashmir.What Agha Shahid Ali expresses as ‘They makea desolation and call it peace’,2 Gangaharexpresses it through phases of ‘violence’ andthe deafening roar of ‘silence of violence’. Shegoes on to analyse how in the varied narrativesof space and time, Kashmir and Kashmiriidentity have been lost somewhere.

The author maintains that Kashmiriyathas from time to time been used in differentcontexts, by people from varied political lean-ings, giving it specific meanings at specifictimes as per the convenience of those usingthe term. If Kashmiriyat gives the state anidentity unique enough to demand Azaadi,where do those who wish to stay with Indiafit in? Hasn’t the ‘ethnic cleansing’ ofKashmiri Pandits been a ‘blotch onKashmiriyat’ and belied the very notion ofthis Kashmiriness, for a community withinKashmir had to become a casualty of the free-dom struggle to assert this unique Kashmiriidentity? Haven’t both Indian secularism and

Kashmir’s nationalism failed when it comesto the tragedy of Kashmiri Pandits havinglost their homeland? These are questionsGangahar raises to bring forth the point thatif Kashmiri nationalism sees itself as incom-patible with Indian nationalism, then in asimilar vein, people from Jammu and Ladakhwould find themselves incompatible with thevery idea of a distinct Kashmiri ethnicity andKashmiri nationalism will be but exclusion-ary in that sense. She takes it a step furtherby talking of groups like the Shias being in aminority and their differences with the ma-jority, which is the Sunnis of Kashmir, be-ing relegated to the background and howthe struggle has turned to that of MuslimKashmir against the Hindu Other.

Through an examination of the dif-ferences in which newspapers from Jammuand Kashmir respectively represented eventslike the Amarnath Land Row, the author goeson to analyse the various ways in which‘truth’ is looked at in the trouble-torn valedepending on where you are looking at itfrom. She further explores how variouscinematic works have presented the Kashmirstory, from Kashmir being merely an objectof beauty in the background in Bollywoodfilms like Kashmir ki Kali in the 1960s toKashmir becoming the central discourse nowin films like Lamhaa and Harud. It isinteresting to see the meanings that cinemaprojects, to observe the prejudices—theIndian nationalist overtones, the marginali-zation of the Kashmir issue, and the existenceof multiple realities and multiple voices in awar zone.

Manisha Gangahar maintains that herwork is not about giving a judgement overwhether or not Kashmir should get Azaadior what solutions should be adopted, butonly to explore certain questions especiallywhen it comes to identity. The question is,what does such an analysis, which seeminglyaccepts Kashmir as a conflict andacknowledges the mass anti-India sentiment,mean for Kashmir and Kashmiris? Does thestatement that, ‘Assertion of Kashmirinationalism as against Indian nationalism isnot only historically questionable butalso…ambiguous in itself ’ (p. 96)notcounter the author’s claim of not beingjudgemental? This work makes evident thechange in narratives on Kashmir in Indiaespecially following what is popularly termed

as Kashmir’s Second Intifada (2008-10). Thelarger narrative has been one that questionsthe Human Rights violations in the Valley(both by the Indian forces and Kashmiristhemselves), debating issues of justice andthe repeal of the Armed Forces Special PowersAct. While there are widespread violations,yet it is incorrect to take a reductionist viewand not look at the historical context fromwhere this problem has emerged. The centristapproach has tried to highlight how Kashmirhas faced excesses and yet how there are somany issues in granting freedom to it thatstatus quo seems to be the viable option. Thiswork more or less fits into that line—all isnot well with Kashmir, neither is all well withKashmir’s demand for Azaadi, for it won’tbe feasible in many ways, and thus evadesany solutions. The Indian state has recon-structed Kashmiriyat to give it a colour alongthe lines of ‘Sarva Dharma Sambhava’ and‘unity in diversity’, such that one could lookat Kashmiriyat within this larger frame ofthis Indianness. Kashmiriyat may changemeanings, but for a common Kashmiri (thedistorted elite-non elite dichotomy, as someworks may point out to, does not apply here),the demand for independence is groundedin historical realities.

While Kashmiri Pandits having to leavetheir homes is tragic, how correct is it to hold


Federalizing India in the Age ofReforms

Harihar Bhattacharyya

REMAPPING INDIA: NEW STATES AND THEIRPOLITICAL ORIGINS

By Louise TillinOxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014,

pp. 1-261, `850.00

Indian federalism has of late been receivinggreater attention from academics, policy

makers, and the media within India, butmore conspicuously, abroad. The age oftreating the States in the Indian federation,condescendingly, as ‘glorified municipalities’is passé. Since the onset of India’s reforms inthe early 1990s, the strategic significance ofthe States has been acknowledged as the sitesof implementing the agenda of reformsincluding performing many functionsnecessary for the same as falling within thecompetence of the States. The perspectivesof State creation by way of what is called‘Reorganization of States’ in India whichgoverned from the 1950s to the 1980s werevery different from that of the post-reformsperiod. Added to the above is the Indianpolitical system’s major shift to coalitiongovernment at the federal level more or lesscoinciding with the onset of reforms. Theinability of any ‘national’ party to obtain amajority in Parliament, and the resultant

compulsion of dependence on the regionbased coalition partners has served to re-activate regional and local actors to demand,or renew the demand, for politicallyredrawing the internal territorial boundariesof India.

Remapping India details the story of thecreation of the three new States, Jharkhandout of Bihar, Chattisgarh out of MadhyaPradesh and Uttarakhand out of UttarPradesh in 2000 when the National Demo-cratic Alliance (NDA) led by the BharatiyaJanata Party (BJP) was in power in Delhi.Each case has been explained in detail bygiving attention to the historical background,the current context, political actors (regionbased as well as national level parties) in-cluding social movements involved in de-manding Statehood, and the effects of suchexercise in terms of human development. In‘Introduction’ that has a sub-title, ‘The Com-promise Politics of Statehood’, the author hasrightly pointed out that ‘unity’ is no longerthe issue when considering such institutionalchange, as was the case previously. She also

identifies the distinctive aspects in creatingthese three States: it took place in the Hindi‘heartland’; the long denied causes of theaboriginal people (in the case of Jharkhand);and the absence of any mass movement inthe case of Chhattisgarh and Uttarakhand—the latter claim though is contestable whenconsidered historically; and the context of‘deeply entrenched caste hierarchies, a fastergrowing population’ (p. 3) and the relativelack of human development. Her argumentis that Statehood is a ‘vehicle for multipleactors with divergent visions of political com-munity and economic life’ (p. 3), and thefinal outcome is a political compromise,which makes sense. The Introduction alsopresents some comparative materials acrossthe globe, which are refreshing, and criti-cally reviews the existing perspectives (p.11)in favour of what she calls ‘A Historical In-stitutionalist Framework’ on the assumptionthat power, or the control over the resourcesis the determining factor in demanding sepa-rate State creation at different times and con-texts.

‘History of Territorial Design and FederalThought in India’ examines the changingdesigns of territorial accommodation ofidentity in India with particular reference tothe significant shift in the thought of theIndian National Congress (INC), to be more

Book News

National Security and Intelligence Manage-ment: A New Paradigm by VappalaBalachandran, a compilation of articles ondifferent facets of India’s security and at-tempts to offer suggestions for much neededreform to the system.Indus Source Books, Mumbai, 2014,pp. 332, `895.00

the Kashmiri Muslim community accountablefor actions of people whom they never gavetheir consent to act on their behalf; while onthe other side, it is clear that the Indian statehas been directing how its various structuresin Kashmir must operate and thus holdingit accountable for its wrongs is but natural.When Gangahar questions the armedstruggle having an unconvincing justifi-cation and asserts that the chance ofKashmiri identity assimilating with theIndian is not impossible, as a commonKashmiri, may I ask, ‘What else does oneprobably do when your house is occupied?Should you accept the terms the occupiersets, even when he has no stake in yourhouse in the first place? How can he evennegotiate what originally belongs to you andmust be returned to you?’

Footnotes

1 Manu Joseph, ‘Sorry, Kashmir is Happy’,Open Magazine, April 20122 Farewell, ‘The Country Without a PostOffice’ (1997)

Samreen Mushtaq is Ph.D at the Department of

Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

Manisha Gangahar maintains

that her work is not about giving

a judgement over whether or

not Kashmir should get Azaadi

or what solutions should be

adopted, but only to explore

certain questions especially

when it comes to identity. The

question is, what does such an

analysis, which seemingly

accepts Kashmir as a conflict

and acknowledges the mass

anti-India sentiment, mean for

Kashmir and Kashmiris?


precise, Jawaharlal Nehru. Althoughreorganization of India’s territory onlinguistic basis was a nationalist pledge ofthe INC, after Independence this seemed toclash with ‘nation-building’, and hence therewas much hesitation on the part of the rulersof India. The most interesting aspect of thischapter is that it shows how the Hindu Rightin India came to positively respond to newregional movements for strategic reasons.

The next two chapters provide verydetailed accounts of the unfolding politicaldrama of the creation of these States, andthe data provided is invaluable for studentsand researchers. Her central observations arethat in each case, the local level BJPpoliticians were active in mobilization, anda broad consensus was achieved (‘construc-ted’?) in favour of the moves. The author thenexamines the caste implications of theinstitutional changes in the Hindi ‘heartland’in that the upper caste dominance waschallenged which included questioning theso-called sacred boundaries in the region.The BJP-led NDA tended to argue that thecreation of such States confirmed theHindutva hypothesis of smaller States foradministrative efficiency; the real picture,however, suggests otherwise. It is shown thatthere was the angle of short-term politicalgains from the ‘national ‘perspective. This

was to be understood in the light of a shiftin perspective of the BJP from outrightopposition in the 1960s to more State creationto support such efforts since the 1980s. Shehas also taken into consideration the absenceof State creation in the remaining States inthe Hindi ‘heartland’, that is, Rajasthan, andargues that because of the State-widedominance of the Jats on the Rajputs in thisState, any sub-caste-based regional movementshad had little space left for such mobilization(p. 175). ‘After 2000: Further Reorganiza-tion?’ throws critical light on the otherlongstanding Statehood demands such asTelengana, Bodoland, Vidarbha, Bhojpur, andMithila, and assesses their relative merit. Thematerials offered are useful for further research.

In ‘Conclusion’ Tillin takes up criticallyvarious arguments in favour of small States.She says that if the small States are defendedfor better economic growth, then there is acase perhaps, as these new States have shownbetter economic growth figures. But sheargues, quite rightly, that the ‘headlinegrowth’ figures conceal a lot: the structuraland spatial geography of growth, and moreimportantly, the poverty statistics in whichcase their performance is abysmal. Forinstance, Chhattisgarh has the ‘highest levelsof rural poverty’ in India (p. 201) And yet,this State pursued an ‘aggressive, extractive

industry-led growth strategy since itsformation’ (p. 202) However, the formationof this State has served to provide some spacefor the OBC politicians particularly in theplains. But in Jharkhand, the causes of theadivasis, the aboriginal people who hadoriginally spearheaded the movements wayback in history, who comprise only about one-third of the population, seemed to have beendiluted because the governing elite could notarrive at a consensus on how best to protectthem. It gave birth to a ‘domicile controversy’which remains unresolved (p 205).

Two limitations of the work meritattention. First, the title is misleading ap-pearing to be a work on geography; the politicsof State creation in India would have betterserved the purpose. Second, it does not discusswhat better purpose of ‘self-rule’ suchinstitutional change was served—as a factoradding to better political order and stabilitythat federalism classically stands for. However,the book is pioneering in terms of provids adetailed story of the creation of the three newStates in the Indian federation, and makes avery important contribution to Indianfederalism.

Harihar Bhattacharyya is Professor in the De-

partment of Political Science, University of

Burdwan, West Bengal.


Contextualizing Indian Politics

Roshni Sengupta

POLITICS IN INDIA: STRUCTURE, PROCESS ANDPOLICY

By Subrata K. MitraOxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014,

pp. 405, `595.00

The year 2014 would be rememberedmainly for a rather bitter, raucous, de-

bilitating and personalized election cam-paign, which has not only driven the alreadypolarized electorate to choose on the basis ofreligion, caste and ethnicity, but also enlargedthe area of influence of marginal players trans-forming the political landscape of India forall time to come. As politics in this teemingand throbbing nation made up of several eth-nic groups and nationalities witnessed mostrecently in the largely successful movementfor a separate State of Telangana carved outof the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh, primarilyon the basis of linguistic and cultural differ-ence, changes for better or for worse, it be-comes imperative for scholars to documentand analyse these transformations takingplace at a rapid pace. Subrata K. Mitra’s up-dated edition of his seminal work on politicsin India lays bare the problems arising outof a one-dimensional view of processes andthe making and unmaking of institutions.

India’s success at not only sustaining ademocratic political system, but also themyriad hued process of democratic deepen-ing despite simmering ethnic and religious

conflicts, regular and recurrent terrorist vio-lence orchestrated by external and internalforces, and widespread poverty, marks herout as an exceptional example particularlywhen compared to China as well as somemiddle-level developing countries such asMexico and Iran. In view of the Indian po-litical experience, therefore, the book posesquestions pertinent to a comprehensive un-derstanding of political structures and pro-cesses and the changes taking place therein.The consummate ease with which the po-litical class succeeded in steering the fledg-ling nation after its dismemberment in 1947on the basis of religion towards a thrivingparliamentary democracy reflects in the pre-sumptuous dichotomy between vast swathesof poor and marginalized sections of thepopulation jostling for space with the ambi-tious burgeoning urban middle class. It alsoleads to raised eyebrows against the modelof development followed by the economicplanners at the helm, which has summarilyfailed to eradicate poverty even though sev-eral welfare measures and empowermentschemes have been successfully imple-mented, rights guaranteed and a reasonabledegree of social integration achieved. Praise-

worthy as it may be, the accomplishment offorging a realistically equal society with oldhierarchies challenged if not broken, basedon the strength of democratic socialism hasmet with only relative success. Hence, thestory of India remains one of unprecedentedsocial paradoxes.

The scholarly work under review positsthe analysis of India’s politics at three levelsof the system. The first, ‘structure’, refers tothe main institutional arrangements of thestate such as the federation, the executive,the legislative, and judicial organs of the stateand the separation of powers, the implement-ing and quasi-rule making bodies such as thebureaucracy and national commissions, andthe bodies responsible for articulating andaggregating the political demands of the elec-torate such as political parties, interest groupsand non-governmental organizations. Thesecond, ‘process’, refers to the two-way routesthat connect the government and the people,defined by Gabriel Almond and others1 as‘interest articulation, interest aggregation,policymaking, policy implementation, andpolicy adjudication’. The third, ‘publicpolicy’, broadly refers to what India’s fed-eral, regional, and local governments do intheir day-to-day activities. Amalgamatedunder four headings by Professor Mitra2 him-self—distribution of money, goods and ser-vices; extraction of resources; regulation ofhuman behaviour; and symbolic outputs—these functions have implications for theeconomy, security, social solidarity, identity,and foreign affairs, broadly referring to India’sstanding in the international arena.

For Granville Austin, Robert Hardgraveand Stanley Kochanek, looking at India fromthe liberal, evolutionary, developmental ap-proach, the general process of democratiza-tion remains the major point of focus. Thework under review identifies two other ap-proaches for the study of Indian politicsnamely Orientalism and Louis Dumont’sappraisal of the society with an emphasis oncaste, a feature exclusive to India. The otherextreme is populated by Marxist theoreti-cians who cast Indian society in terms of astate of disequilibrium, caused by the mainconflict between the owners of capital andland on the one hand and the emergingclasses of peasants and workers on the other.Mitra’s book encapsulates the elements of sev-eral schools of thought. While retaining the

structural, functional core of the liberal mod-ernization approach, the analysis brings onboard conflict of classes, castes, ethnicities,groups, regions and religions as an integralpart of India’s political experience and notmerely as its aberration.

The exposition puts the main burden ofexplanation on the role of the state as bothneutral and partisan and the capacity of thepolitical elites dispersed over the systemmobilizing supporters acting in their owninterest and according to their own beliefs.These leaders and followers are rational ac-tors and as such they continuously pursuetheir goals and combine all the resources attheir command to bring influence to bearon the decision maker, hoping for an out-come favourable to them. These decisionmakers, explains Mitra, known in popularparlance as netas, are located at the crucialnodes of the political system such as the fed-eral government, states, district headquar-ters and local government bodies. Their abil-ity to act as intermediaries between the tra-ditional society and the modern state with-out being exclusively identified with eithermodernity or tradition, explains the successof India’s democracy and governance in largemeasure.

The book puts forward its key argumentshinged on a structural model which suggests


that the willingness and ability of the deci-sion makers to manage law and order, un-dertake strategic social and economic re-forms, and accommodate collective identityin the making of public policy is of crucialimportance for effective governance. There-fore, the account of Indian politics offeredin this book is based crucially on the premisethat orderly social and economic change ispossible when elites—political leaders, civilservants, and other decision makers—arewilling and able to manage order, welfare,and identity. Beginning from a detailed viewof the embryonic origins of the modern In-dian state in the post-Independence periodto the diversity and complexity of the In-dian population and its political culture,several chapters of this book, recommendedas critical reading for all serious students andscholars of Indian politics, focus on India’sinstitutional arrangement as well as Centre-State relations. Key developments discussedin detail include the 73rd Amendment ofthe Indian Constitution recognizing the vil-lage as an arena in its own right, andpanchayats as the third tier of the Indianfederation; the States Reorganization Act(1956); and federal division of powers interms of its ability to balance self-rule andshared-rule.

Subsequent chapters engage with theprocess aspects of Indian politics—the ar-ticulation, aggregation and marginalizationof interests. The introduction of the Repre-sentation of the People Act (1951) and caste-based reservations that have changed thecourse of Indian politics are some process-oriented aspects the book employs to makeits position clear besides main structural com-ponents like elections, and recruitment ofcivil servants through the merit-cum-reser-vations representational model. Major po-litical parties such as the INC, the BJP andseveral regional parties have been adequatelyexplained. The author argues that politicsover the past six decades has remained largelyconfined within the system as anti-systemparties and political violence has remainedon the fringes of the political system. Theadvent of the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)—clearly at an ideological disjuncture with thehitherto traditional political parties, whethercentrist, majoritarian right wing or left-of-centre, and regional parties based on casteand ethnic similarities—has perforce pittedthe established political system to match itswits against a political opponent deeplygrounded in populism and a seeming disre-gard for institutions. It would be interestingto analyse the trajectory of the Indian politi-cal system if the AAP formula actually man-ages to take root. For the moment though

Mitra’s book finds that the most importantconsequence of the configuration of coalitionumbrellas has been to induce a sense of mod-eration in Indian politics.

The politics of poverty reduction in In-dia comes through as a pertinent facet of theexposition. The main ethos of India’s politicaleconomy, namely the politics of incrementalgrowth and redistribution, planning themixed economy, the green revolution, pov-erty and peasant radicalism, liberalization, theIT boom, globalization and ‘swadeshi’ eco-nomics have been creatively investigated toshow the complexity of India’s politicaleconomy. India’s engagement with its neigh-bours and the rest of the world appears as apoint of discussion in the text with the focusbeing on the three Kashmir wars, the Indo-China border war, and the Indian interven-tion in Sri Lanka as they are introduced toillustrate the distinct character of India’s for-eign policy as it oscillates between nationalinterest and national ideals. Challenges suchas citizenship and violent challenges to order(read cross-border terrorism and the Naxalproblem) are discussed in detail as necessaryadjuncts to India’s political economy.

Mitra’s defining work in the form of Poli-tics in India remains an effective, essential andpertinent contribution to the field of Indianpolitics and political economy through its vari-ous revised and updated editions. Vastly use-ful as a reference text for graduate studentswith an interest in Indian politics, it is handyfor research scholars and subject experts as well.A point of personal disagreement with thebook remains the diffusion of focus areas,which deviates from specific discussion points.However, given the fact that this is an intro-ductory text, the analysis keeps to the well-litmain street of the complex politics of the coun-try, leaving out the darker alleys dear to thespecialists. Instead of looking towards theuniqueness of India’s culture and religion tosearch for an explanation to the puzzles ofIndian politics, the book builds on the agencyof India’s political leaders and their followersas the key to understanding the structure andevolution of the multifaceted political system.

Footnotes

1 Almond, G.A., R.J. Dalton, G.B.J. PowellJr, K. Strom (eds.). 2008. Comparative PoliticsToday: A World View, 8th Edition. New York:Longman.2Mitra, S.K. 2008. ‘Politics in India’, in G.A.Almond et al. (eds.), Ibid.

Roshni Sengupta is Assistant Professor in the

Department of Political Science, Amity University,

Manesar.


A Tumultous March

Rajendra Kumar Pandey

THE FALL AND RISE OF TELANGANABy Gautam Pingle

Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2014,pp. xvii+326, price not stated.

The book under review seeks to criticallyanalyse the factors, circumstances and

processes that underlined the tumultuous andpainful march towards the creation of the Stateof Telangana as the twenty-ninth State of theIndian Union marking the conclusion of along-drawn struggle of the people of Telanganaseeking separate Statehood for their region.The volume underscores the rise of Telanganafrom the naught to which it was reduced inthe post-Independence times by its mergerwith the Andhra and Rayalseema regions ofthe erstwhile Madras State to create the firstlinguistic State of India consisting of theTelugu speaking people. This volume, as theauthor concedes, is mainly, if not entirely, asystematic arrangement of his previous pub-lications with the remaining portions writtenafresh for the book.

The topical nature of much of the vol-ume is apparent from the arrangement of thechapters, not only in terms of number butalso thematic focus. Thus, the first five chap-ters look at the historiography of the regionwith a view to situate the context in whichthe whole region was reorganized leading tothe decimation of the distinct status of theTelangana region by merging it with the other

regions to create the State of Andhra Pradesh.However, much of the passionate argumentsare presented in such a way as to uncriticallyshow the historical wrongs done to theTelangana region by the political class of thetime. At the same time, incoherence of thecontents and related arguments is also un-mistakably apparent that somehow distortsthe logical flow of the volume. In the chapterdealing with Hyderabad the entire debate onthe city’s past, present and future have beendiscussed at the same time and at a very earlystage without properly and contextually dis-cerning the issues involved in the allocationof a particular status to the city.

In order to understand the dynamics andcomplexities of the social, economic and po-litical problems and aspirations of the region,the next three chapters reason out the sim-mering discontent rooted in the varied andsubtle interests of different stakeholders.Thus, the sixth chapter looks into the intri-cacies of the caste configuration of the Statein terms of the political positioning of threepredominant castes, namely Reddys,Kammas, and Telegas in order to zealouslyprotect their bastion amidst the fluid situa-tion arising in the wake of the formation ofthe new State of Andhra Pradesh. The re-

sultant socio-economic andpolitical discomfiture ofcertain sections of society,mainly in the Telangana re-gion, sowed the seeds of abitter and unabated castewar that eventually culmi-nated in the rise of ultraLeft extremism in the re-gion.

With the wideningchasm between the differentclasses and people, particu-larly politicians, belongingto different regions of theState, the stage was nowcharacteristically set for thegame of political one upmanship on the partof the shrewd politicians, with Statehood forTelangana emerging as the favourite whip tobeat the opponent. The next few chaptersunravel the machinations and counteroffen-sives of the competing ringmasters. To illus-trate the free march of unscrupulous politi-cians in the united Andhra Pradesh along withthe politics of showcasing relative deprivationamongst the various regions of the State, theauthor picks up the personality of Y.S.Rajasekhara Reddy and the Rayalseema re-gion of the State respectively. Further, thescandalous design of the vested interests torob the tribals of their hereditary land rightsand trap them into the vicious cycle of in-debtedness in the hands of the moneylend-ers, on the one hand, and to deprive the Sched-uled Castes of their constitutional right to gov-ernment jobs, on the other, forms the centralargument of the eleventh chapter. Such movesfurther alienated these marginalized sectionsof society and the chorus for a separateTelangana State became louder and fiercer.

An interesting and quite inevitable sub-ject of discussion focuses on the difficultposition of Muslims in the Telangana re-gion both in pre- and post-Independencetimes. Before Independence, the rule of theNizam gave some sense of security to theMuslims in Hyderabad, the situation tooka turn for the worse after Independence withthe Muslims becoming the target of bothHindu fundamentalists, on the one hand,and the deceitful politicians, on the other.In such a scenario, a feeling has dawned onthe Muslims that the creation of Telanganaas a separate State might give them a betterpolitical representation in the legislative

bodies that ultimately enable them to pro-tect their lives and property in an effectivemanner.

The last few chapters of the volume high-light the proceedings of the past four or five

years beginning with the estab-lishment of the SrikrishnaCommission to study the is-sue of Statehood to Telangana.Given the proactive role playedby the author in making sub-stantive submissions before theSrikrishna Commission, andkeeping a vigilant eye on itsmodus operandi in arriving atits findings, it is not surpris-ing that four chapters havebeen devoted to critically ex-amine the structure, functions,working and final recommen-dations of the Commission.Interestingly, a major concernof the author has been to ex-

pose the sinister designs at work in the Com-mission to subvert the demand for Statehoodfor Telangana on flimsy and illogical grounds.Despite all the pulls and pressures, once theformation of Telangana as the latest State ofIndia becomes a certainty, the author turnshis focus of attention to other regions, notonly of India but also Pakistan, in order todraw parallels between these regions andTelangana. He concludes the monograph bycalling for trifurcation of Andhra Pradesh intothree distinct units called Andhra, Rayalseemaand Telangana, and suggesting a new modelof governance for Telangana.

On the whole, methodologically, the vol-ume does not seem to suffer from any seriousinconsistency of argument or incoherence inthe thematic arrangement of its various sec-tions. However, given the fact that the ‘vol-ume has been penned for the people of theregion’, there appears lack of a dispassionateanalysis of facts and circumstances in criti-cally examining the imperatives that eventu-ally turned out to be impediments in the cre-ation of a separate State of Telangana. Thus,the volume reads more like chronicling thetrajectory of the ups and downs in the move-ment than a rigorous analysis of the issuesand processes of the struggle of a people claim-ing their legitimate entitlements in the faceof the vested interests bent upon denying themthe same. Given the contemporaneous emer-gence of Telangana as a separate state, and grow-ing clamour amongst many other regions ofthe country for Statehood, this volume is likelyto be a valuable reference work.

Rajendra Kumar Pandey is at the Centre for Fed-

eral Studies, Jamia Hamdard University, New Delhi.


A Contested Issue

Padam Nepal

QUESTIONS OF IDENTITY IN ASSAM: LOCATION,MIGRATION, HYBRIDITY

By Nandana DuttaSage, New Delhi, 2012, pp. XXXIV + 270,

price not stated.

The question of identity vis-à-vis migra-tion in Assam is a much debated, highly

complex, thoroughly contested issue. Theissue is enmeshed in the cauldron of con-tending views and is delivered differently byintellectuals, administrators, media, and vari-ous elements of the Assamese social structure,including individuals both natives and themigrants. The volume under review is couchedin dense theoretical premises on the one hand,and, the lived experience of the author, onthe other.

The Introduction has six different yet or-ganically linked sections: subject position: per-sonal and professional; reading in location;the discipline and the location; responses toviolence; rationale; and texts. The author dis-cusses the personal and the professional sub-ject position in the development of her argu-ments in view of the disciplinary practices ofher profession, and her personal experienceinvolving her hybrid identity, its covert or overtdeliverance, both at home and outside andthe (dis)comforts associated with such deliv-erances. She explores the various hierarchicallyplaced dyads across geographies of territories

and knowledge frameworks and establishes‘contexts’ as ‘determining’, justifying the ne-cessities to probe deeper into the process andpower relationships and associated violencesas imperatives in comprehending such issuesas the one being addressed in the book.

The chapter ‘The Conditions of Knowl-edge: Location, Migration, Hybridity’ con-sists of ten self explanatory sections and be-gins by approaching critically the valorizationof the outsider position on the nature andproduction of knowledge, turns towards ob-ject-focused approach in justifying theauthor’s ontological and epistemologicalstances taken in the light of the problem un-dertaken for study and the resources incorpo-rated as study materials, and uses the per-sonal experiences as a filter to minimize thepossibilities of misrepresentation.

In ‘The Assam Movement: Thirty YearsOn’ the author begins by reinterpreting criti-cally the Assam movement as a ‘critical occa-sion for understanding contemporary Assam’,

contextualizes the renewed violences asso-ciated with it in the recent past and thepolitics of violence and its media represen-tations, and relates it to the quest for anAssamese identity. In this chapter, the au-thor excavates the competing and multilay-ered identity narratives and the modes ofprotests articulated during the movementand the layers of overt and covert violenceassociated with it, transcending the move-ment and seeping into the social behaviour,social relations and the cultural life of thepeople. The practices of violence and the as-sociated process of its appropriation, natural-ization and demonstration in theirmultitudinal forms are demonstrated throughcitation of texts, and their implications areunequivocally represented. Delineating themicro-details of the protest programmes, thediscussion on its deliverance and associatedviolence at the familial and household levelsto the rich mosaic of Assamese population isminutely documented and analysed. Further,the interpretations on the movement by emi-nent scholars like Sanjoy Hazarika and SanjibBaruah, which are primarily migration focused,are discussed and analysed and the threadsof dissent and counter-narratives on migration,movement, and forms of identity are explored.Finally, the section on discursive representa-tion ends with a lament that the stagnantnature of the discourse on Assamese identity


owes its failure to subject itself to self scrutinyand (re)introspection.

‘Memories and Violence: Rememberingthe Assam Movement’ begins with a brief dis-cussion and justification on the recourse tomemory and the personal retrospection asnatural correlates of the narrative method usedin the work. Drawing on individual/personalmemories, she presents the experiences of re-spondents of the movement in a conversationalmode and reveals that the movement has con-tributed towards the spread of ‘undemocratic,coercive, and violent modes into the daily livesand psyche’ of the people—what she calls ‘theinternalization of prevalence and pervasive vio-lence’ that impinges on the everyday experi-ence of the people. The author then analysesthe after-effects of the movement through theexploration of the creative literary texts writ-ten in the immediate aftermath of incidentsof violences in various phases of the movement,and argues that both the form and the natureof representations in these literary genres arepregnant with sensitivity to the state of thesociety thus produced in the wake of suchviolences; and that the contemporary violentsituations and acts by various groups and thegeneration of such internal dynamics as un-leashing a series of autonomy movementsowing to the demonstration-effect providedby the Assam Movement.

‘Ethnic Identity Questions: NarratingPast and Present’ traces the emergence of eth-nic identity to the colonial legacies of in-ducing migration for plantation labour, andsurveys the competing narratives on migra-tion and identity, explores migration mod-els and argues that a host community’s per-ception of a migrant develops through stagesof welcome, then indifference, then the per-ception of threat and finally outright hostil-ity, which increases in direct proportion tothe increase in the numbers of the migrants.Dwelling on the historical perspective onmigration in Assam, the study reveals thatthe rivalry in Assam was initially not betweenHindus and Muslims, but between thespeakers of two major languages in colonialAssam—the Bengalis and Assamese, which,however, turned into a violent movementand morphed into a communal one with ananti-Muslim bias with the arrival of theBangladeshi migrants which released emo-tions that were perceived to have subvertedor destroyed the host’s habitual ways of liv-ing. Finally, the author discusses the narra-tives of neglect which transcend the imme-diate level of neglect (of demands of theAssam Movement) to the neglect of theNorth East as a periphery in the Centre-Staterelations, which culminated in the refusal toimagine Assamese identity in multiple terms,

the refusal itself being founded on assump-tions of exclusivity.

The author deals with the various con-structs of the Assamese: the colonial con-structs, the constructs by the native intellec-tuals, and the contemporary constructs ofAssamese identity in ‘Framing the Question:Who are the Assamese?’ to present a rejoin-der on the ‘ways of belonging’. It is interest-ing to note here that the author traces theroots of the constructions of the ‘other’ in acolonial setting with the British constructionsof the Bengali as an inverted image of theAssamese, descriptions of the people of Assam,defence of the use of Bengali language inschools, encouragement for immigration toAssam for plantation labourers and clericalsin British administrative machinery, and theresultant feeling among the Assamese of theBritish lack of sympathy about Assamese fearsof cultural and linguistic erasure; and the re-sponses of the native intellectuals on such con-structions. However, the chapter also takesnote of the emergent forms of hybrid identi-ties in Assam and the broadening of the term‘Assamese’ showing increased tendencies to-wards inclusiveness, although amidst dissen-sions. Yet the author does not fail in her at-tempt to warn about the troubled contiguityof the communities with each other, speciallyvis-à-vis the dominant Assamese communitybecause of the ‘ingrained imbalances, histori-cal complacencies, and continuing injusticesexperienced by these communities’.

The author has developed an argumentthat the nature and character of the iden-tity narrative in contemporary Assam ischaracterized by multiple and often con-tradictory processes of identity construc-tions, which is but a byproduct of the con-tinued and unabated process of immigra-tion to Assam. She underlines the necessityto further uncover and interrogate elementsof modernity determining Assamese iden-tity which gives directions for future re-search.

The book is a pleasure read, dealing withthe often neglected side of the contributionsof migrations towards the identity narratives.However, the one major limitation of the bookis that despite opening on a promising noteof inclusion, it has overlooked the necessity ofexpanding the horizon of its readership by itschoice of language that is highly technical ren-dering itself incomprehensible to a commonreader.

Padam Nepal, PhD, is Reader in Political Science

at St Joseph’s College, North Point, Darjeeling,

and author of Environmental Movements in In-

dia: Politics of Dynamism and Transformations and

An Introduction to Politics.


Restrictive Cultural Frames

G. Amarjit Sharma

CULTURAL CONTOURS OF NORTH-EAST INDIABy Birendranath Datta

Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2012, pp. 255,`695.00

The book under review discusses the cul-tural contours of North East India in

three key areas: the integrated approach tothe understanding of history using folk ma-terials; tradition and change in folk culture;and the pan-Indian connections of religion,epics, arts and crafts. Birendra Datta con-siders the cultural heritage of North EastIndia as the ‘essential ingredient of the com-posite Indian culture’. This is despite hisunderstanding of the region historically asthe corridor of people’s movement and cul-tural stimuli from ‘Indian mainland’ andneighbouring lands in the north and east ofthe region. To him, the region has acquired adistinctive culture within a composite In-dian cultural heritage. Moreover, the socio-cultural traditions that include folklore arefree from political interpretations of ‘less In-dian’ or ‘un-Indian’ that he feels the regionhas registered in other spheres of politics.Essentially, the underlying argument is thatthere is much of an all India affiliation ofthe traditions, as much as there is a pecu-liarity in North East India.

Such an understanding, however, raisestwo critical issues: one, that of approachingculture in general and cultural sources inparticular of North East India, especiallyfolklore, as the fringe of the whole that isIndia; two, that of distancing traditions fromthe political. The fundamental problem liesin taking the composite culture as given andapproaching folklore as either proving orextending compositeness at a regional level.In fact, the idea of composite culture or‘unity in diversity’ has been popular rheto-ric in postcolonial politics for containingdiversity. Datta has yielded to this rhetoric.He fails to engage historically and politicallywith the contradictory fellow idea of com-posite India as Hindu. He begins with theacceptance of the idea of composite cultureand Hinduism as synonymous and the es-sential elements of Indian tradition. It isequally problematic to assume Hindu civi-lization (tradition) as a homogenous (orgreater) tradition.

On the foundation of the above threeconsiderations, Datta highlights the impor-tance of regional history based on sourcesconsidered as historically valuable. To him,the purpose of such history is to make thepresence of North East India felt in thecivilizational discourse of India. For this, he

states that there are tangible bodies of evi-dences in the oral and written sources suchas chronicles, saint biographies, immigrationaccounts, war accounts etc. He states, forinstance, that chroniclers had undertaken thespadework for a broad based and compre-hensive history of the North East and it isfor the scholars now to build on it. Thesewritten accounts are understood historicallyas reaching out to each other, not restrictedto native areas or local dynasties. The mostprominent account of such scale of historyis cited on neo-Vaishnavism and socio-cul-tural ambience of Assam and Manipur inthe eighteenth century.

This need for recognition of regional his-tory, however, is seriously problematic. Inan attempt to see only the connectednesswithin a bounded understanding of Indiantradition or regional history, Datta is oblivi-ous to the fact that the oral and historicalaccounts are not necessarily connected for anational or regional history; this type of re-strictive history is often a byproduct of theagency of ethnicity and nationalism. For in-stance, a historical analysis of the oral ac-counts of the Apatanis done by Stuart Black-burn (2007) shows differences between thelocal version that link the Apatanis’s oral tra-dition to Tibet and scholarly studies thatlink the Apatanis to the East of ArunachalPradesh. However, the connection withHindu society is least available in their oralhistories except as a result of cultural assimi-lation. In addition, the key sources that arecited as historically valuable are not only statecentric, but have also been variedly inter-preted even among members of the samecommunity. This also raises the problem oflocating histories in either civilizational orregional history frames that impedes one toactually look at issues of space flexibly andin a temporarily dynamic fashion. As SanjaySubrahmanyam (2011) has argued else-where, the purpose of history could be basi-cally for placing history at different spatialand historical junctures that could makesense of connecting history. Birendra Datta’ssense of holistic and integrated Indian (andregional) history is actually restrictive in aspatial and historical sense.

The book deals with how the social re-lationship between the non-tribal and tribalpeople works in North East India. Datta feelsthat while acculturation of the tribes to (non-

tribal) Hindu society stops elsewhere in In-dia, it continues in North East India. Ac-culturation here is the socio-cultural pro-cess that involves three grouping of people:one, the tribes in the hills relatively isolatedfrom the influences of sanskritic tradition ofthe core valley people; two, tribal groups,residing both in the hills and the valley, whohave been acculturated in various degrees asa result of living in close proximity with the‘non-tribal’ sanskritized people; three, thosecentrally habited valley societies, who aresubstantially influenced by sanskritic cul-ture.

The process of acculturation of thepeople in the hills towards the core valley isdiscussed under the concept of sanskriti-zation. The hill people are supposed to movetoward the sanskritic valley core. This hasalso meant detribalization that involvesadoption of the Hindu religion and Indo-Aryan language; but in other cases, it is justadoption of either the religion or language,not both. But he states that tribal identityis retained among the acculturated tribesand even in the sanskrtized core people.Another aspect of sanskritization involvesclaiming status of power, particularlyKshatriya power. Historically, the Meitei andAhom Kings who captured state power ap-propriated the status of Kshatriya through


linkages developed with the Hindu gods andgoddesses and the epic stories of Mahabharatand Ramayana. But what is not clear withDatta’s concept is whether the process oc-curs as a case of vertical social mobilityamong the above three spatial groupings ofpeople.

The spatial grouping of people is rathera reiteration of colonial hierarchy. Datta ap-parently assumes acculturation as a naturalprocess, failing to acknowledge thatpostcolonial North East is also largely a ne-gation of this civilizational ordering. Vari-ous contemporary assertive tribal identitiesquestion this ordering. Importantly, popu-larity of Buddhism and Christianity amongtribes could also be understood as reversalof the above process of acculturation. Fur-ther, it would be wrong to simply reducehistorical instances of kings establishing link-ages with Hindu gods or goddesses or claim-ing Kshatriya power as a case of little or alarger tradition. Such linkages were alsomade necessary by the historically and po-litically contingent factors of states in sev-enteenth and eighteenth centuries. This his-torical contingency is least discussed.

In the context of tribal and non-tribalframes, Datta brings in the notion of cul-tural contact. Myths and legends in the re-gion are taken as key sources of cultural con-tact, togetherness and hence commonness.This, he feels, could narrate a different storyinstead of contesting identities. It is furtherunderstood as a state of juxtaposition be-tween tribal and non-tribal, sanskritized andnon-sanskritized and lastly between the re-fined and primitive. This is despite differ-ences and rivalries among people. Tribal nar-ratives are understood as a display of theawareness of the ‘other’ and sympathy forall. The spirit of togetherness is also inter-preted in trade and administrative links:market (hat) as a site of contact between Aotribe and plain Assamese.

However, the problem with the book ba-sically remains in the distinction the authormakes between political and folk culture.Folk culture and folk materials have alreadybeen mediated and processed by severalagencies including state and public bodiesfor various ends. Roma Chatterji’s (2009:xiii-xviii), for instance, has shown that folk-lore is no longer embedded exclusively intradition. But, through folklore studies, ithas become contemporaneous with the mod-ern forms of culture and regional identity.

Datta on the Ramayana tellings in NorthEast India interestingly discusses Ramayanain poetry, verse, and performance. Two fun-damental things are considered as the majormethods of reading the Ramayana: one, San-

skritic Valmiki Ramayana as the ‘original’;and secondly, the ethnic milieu of NorthEast India as the social condition that pro-duces internally varied local Ramayanatellings. However, it has been argued else-where that Valmiki’s Sanskrit Ramayana isone among many tales of Rama (Ramanujan2004: 150-58) and one could learn moreRamayanas once we reject Valmiki’s story asthe original (Richman 1991). Rejection oforiginality to appreciate diversity and dif-ferences in tellings is an important point tobe noted. Another point is what historianRomila Thapar argues that Ramayana doesnot belong to any one moment in historyand each Ramayana reflects the social loca-tion and ideology of those who appropriateit (quoted in Richman 1991: 4).

Datta considers Madhava Kandali Ra-mayana of Assam as ‘faithful to the origi-nal’. This is despite local twists in story andadaptability to popular taste and consump-tion of the Assamese Ramayana. Dependingupon the level of acculturation and close-ness with non-tribal neighbour in Assam,different versions of Rama Katha (story) areavailable among the plain tribes and hilltribes. These versions are considered exten-sions of Valmiki Ramayana. Of the hill tribes,Karbis, Dimasas, and Jaintias are acquaintedwith the Ramayana lore with addition of dis-tinctive local hue. However, there is less ofan exploration of the ideology of thoseamong whom Ramayanas are popular.

Datta’s discussion raises three criticalproblems: one, the consideration of SanskritRamayana of Valmiki as the original text andothers as the local versions of it; second,linked with the first, is the linkage of tradi-tion of story tellings in the frame of greatand small traditions; lastly, appreciation ofRamayanas of various ethnic groups as re-lated with sanskritization. There is a priorassumption of the Valmiki SanskriticRamayana as a central narrative of the re-gion. But, on the lighter side, one will findin Datta’s book the aesthetic appeal in thevarieties of Ramayanas in the region, oncethere is suspension of belief in one Ramayanaand others as derivatives. The element ofsyncretism or cultural blending is also some-thing Datta attempts by citing how Karbisof Assam have harmoniously blended theirtraditions with the Ramayana.

The book, nevertheless, gives the impres-sion that Ramayanas of certain people in theregion are not just the variants of ValmikiRamayana, but also emphasize their Bud-dhistic connections. Mizo’s Ram Kathastory, Khena-Ramate Unao Thawnthu is con-sidered as a case of absorption of Ramayanawithout falling into the structure of accul-

turation to a Hindu neighbour. Ramayanatelling reached Mizo through their contactwith the Hinduized and Budhhistic groupsin Chittagong and Tripura. The location ofMizos in between the Assam Valley andChittagong (Bangladesh) and diverse cul-tural influences is something that couldmake the Rama story different from the rest.Perhaps the point that the Ramayanatellings in the culture of North East Indiain particular got influences historically fromseveral angles and directions is somethingDatta should have emphasized more as theaspect of culture rather than restricting it tothe premise of integrated Indian culture,original tradition, story and derivatives.

References

A.K. Ramanujan, 2004:’Three Hundred Ramayanas:Five Examples and Three Thoughts on Transla-tion’ in A.K. Ramanujan, Vinay Dharwadkar,Stuart H. Blackburn (ed.), The Collected Essays ofA.K. Ramanujan, New Delhi: Oxford UniversityPress, pp. 131-60.

Paula Richman (ed.), 1991:Many Ramayanas: TheDiversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia,Berkerley and Oxford: University of CaliforniaPress.

Roma Chatterji, 2009: Writing Identities: Folkloreand Performative Arts of Purulia, Bengal, NewDelhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for theArts, Aryan Books International.

Stuart Blackburn, 2007: ‘Oral Stories and CultureAreas: From Northeast India to Southwest China’,South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Vol.XXX, no. 3, December, pp. 419-37.

Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 2011. Explorations in Con-nected History: From the Tagus to the Ganges, NewDelhi: Oxford University Press.

G. Amarjit Sharma is Assistant Professor at the

North East India Studies Programme, School of

Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New

Delhi.

Book News

Central Asia and its Neighbours: Prospects ofIndia’s Cooperation edited by RashpalMalhotra, Sucha Singh Gill and DavinderK. Madaan bring out the evolving situationin the Central Asia and urge of the CentralAsian countries to emerge as independentnational entities and also various dimensionsof security are examined with the view toachieve modern development and peace inthe region and its extended neighbourhood.Centre for Research in Rural and Indus-trial Development (CRRID), Chandigarh,2014, pp. 308, `500.00


Return of the Peasant

Sajal Nag

A CENTURY OF PROTESTS: PEASANT POLITICS INASSAM SINCE 1900By Arupjyoti Saikia

Routledge, New Delhi, pp. xvi-480, `1195.00

The postmodernist invasion has not onlypushed certain traditional histories out

of circulation but also relegated the extremelyuseful analysis of class and movements thatIndian history was used to. Although cer-tain tribal movements and peasant move-ments in Indian history were fortunateenough to be retrieved by the subaltern his-toriographical schools, the peasants of Assamwere not one of these. As it is, the peasantsof Assam were not given even one-third ofthe volume of space allotted to secessionistmovements and insurgency, ethnic assertionand conflicts, regionalist movements, au-tonomy movements, anti-alien movementsof the region. Assam has a richer history ofpeasant struggles than middle class politicalactivities which needed to be recorded andallotted the role it deserved in the making ofmodern Assam. Saikia’s work brings back theold fashioned history of peasant protest andpolitics into the limelight again.

The author says that an essentially agrar-ian economy, converted into a prosperousplantation economy, Assam has since beenwritten about mostly for non-agrarianthemes. He is also aware that in this web of

middle class movements the peasants whowere the makers of modern Assam were com-pletely lost. Except for a number of excel-lent works in the vernacular, the Assamesepeasants were touched only peripherally. TheAssamese peasantry came into prominencewith the advent of the British in the Valley(even though it was the peasants whothrough a violent uprising had brought downthe earlier Ahom regime ) and their various‘colonial modernizing’ endeavours and it isthe British colonial state as well as thelandowning classes that the Assamese peas-ants had to fight against for their survival.

Saikia’s chapter on the ‘Agrarian Setting1900-50’ takes the landscape of the Brahma-putra Valley as the backdrop of the agrarianeconomy. Although the role of the colonialstate does not figure in shaping such aneconomy, he does well to demonstrate share-cropping as a major feature of this economy.It is indeed curious that in a ryotwari areathere was such a huge rise of landlordismand sharecropping. The author obliquelyattributes it to the rise of absentee landlord-ism which was not only extensive but alsoplayed an important role in shaping theeconomy—the number of absentee landlords

was higher than the rate of population growthas shown by the author. This had coincidedwith the coeval rise of sharecropping. Whatthe author does not do is demonstrate whothese absentee landlords were and what eco-nomic conditions facilitated such a hugegrowth in a ryotwari area. The increase ofsharecropping was also due to the landless-ness of the ex-tea garden labourers who atthe expiry of their contract took up share-cropping as a means of their livelihood. Thenthere were the seasonal migrants from EastBengal who came as sharecroppers. The abo-lition of slavery had released a labour forceinto the labour market available for share-cropping jobs. The author does not howevermention what was the nature of slavery thatexisted and how it was abolished. It also dis-cusses rural pauperization, indebtedness,usury, and land alienation. Then there wereinstitutional landlords like the VaishnaviteSatras who held the rent free lands. It is ofcourse not known what percentages of thelands were actually held by these institutionallandlords but bringing them under the pur-view of this discussion as also the inclusion ofthe parallel process of Hinduization of thetribals by the Vaishnavite Satra institutions sothat they could obtain compulsory servicesfrom these converts as per Hindu customs.

During the civil disobedience movementsome non-brahmin groups came together toform the Sankar Sangha which resisted thesocio-religious practices prescribed by theSatras. The Sangha became a rallying pointfor non-brahmin peasants targeting landedproperties of the Satras. It was an anti-brah-min, anti-landlord movement. Similarly theKaibartas—a fisherman community also re-jected brahmanical rituals and invented itsicons and festivals like that of the RadhikaSati festival. It eventually evolved into a so-cial mobility movement with the establish-ment of the All Assam Kaibarta Sammelan.These were significant social developmentsin rural Assam for which the author deservescredit for uncovering. He shows that it isnot true that unlike the immigrant peasantsthe Assamese peasants did not go beyondtheir paternal lands to reclaim fresh lands.He has shown from records that Assamesepeasants had often been found to reclaimlands in char and chapori areas where pamcultivation was resorted to by rich peasantsto augment their income. The reasons fornot going too far to reclaim wastelands from

the forests were multiple: the wild state ofthe vicinity, fear of attacks by wild animals,locusts and other unforeseen dangers in anuninhibited zone.

The advent of the new century markeda transition in the economy. Absentee land-lordism, high percentage of landlessness andrise of sharecroppers, high rent structure,rural indebtedness and usury, land alienationand transfer from productive to non-produc-tive forces and lastly, entry and permanentpresence of a large immigrant peasant popu-lation marked this transition. There was ten-sion, dissent and radicalism in the peasantsociety which had become quite visible. Thepoliticization of the peasants gained fillipfrom the rise of nationalist politics at thenational level. While peasants began to usethis new found political enthusiasm to ar-ticulate their problems, it was still not anorganized activity. The mode was still peti-tion and prayer. A careful study of the peti-tions by the author brings out the graphicdescription of their miseries and injustice.The petitions among other things includeddemand for reduction of revenue, atrocitiesby railway officials, grazing taxes, criticism ofgovernment’s developmental works and pro-test against the peasantry’s customary rightsover grazing lands and fishing areas. Onemisses a linkage with the pre-1900 agrariansituation of Assam which period saw the mostmilitant peasant uprisings.


The beginning of an organized national-ist movement also marked the beginning oforganized peasant politics. The Indian Na-tional Congress’s endeavour to mobilize thepeasants by taking cognizance of their griev-ances led to the formation of Ryot Sabhas. Itmobilized peasants, organized annual confer-ences where Congress nationalists deliveredlectures and sought governmental interven-tion to redress peasant’s problems. The scat-tered Ryot Sabhas got a shape in 1933 withthe formation of the Assam Ryot Sabha. Otherthan the Hinduized tribals, the tribal peas-antry remained more or less indifferent to theryot which opposed the settlement of EastBengal immigrants in Assam and transfer oflands from indigenous to immigrant peasants.It is interesting to read that some Ryot Sabhasmade non-agrarian and enlightened demandslike the establishment of colleges, a univer-sity for Assam, and even opposed the estab-lishment of Bengali vernacular schools whichwould cater to the needs of the immigrants.

The author, rightly, does not give un-necessary importance to the phenomenon ofimmigration of farm settlers from East Ben-gal and shows it as a natural corollary to anexpanding economy. The agrarian situationin East Bengal that constituted the backdropof large-scale immigration of Bengali farmsettlers into Assam is appropriately placed.It is only with the advent of jute cultivationand simultaneous immigration of East Ben-gal peasants that land reclamation on a largescale began. But it was more a state projectof the colonial regime and there was no com-petition between the immigrants and theindigenous peasants for waste land reclama-tion. The author does well to blast the mythof Assam’s land abundance but some quan-titative substantiation on the subject wasnecessary for such a bold assertion.

The study however leaves many later daydevelopments unexplained. What was theexact volume of immigrant population?What was the nature of impact on the de-mography? What was the exact percentageof land occupied by the immigrants? If therewas no competition for land why was theissue raised at various levels? Why was thereso much opposition to the East Bengal im-migrants? It could not be religious affilia-tion as the author has himself shown thatboth Hindu and Muslim immigrants wereequally resisted by the indigenous people.Similarly, in what way the immigrants con-tributed to the colonial project of transform-ing Assamese agrarian structure is not dis-cussed. However, he is able to show how theEast Bengali immigrants were seen as thecause of all Assam’s ills, rise of crime, expan-sionism, land transfer, access to water bod-

ies, fishing and even as a threat to indigenouswomen. There surfaced a complete socialpolarization between the immigrant peasantsand indigenous peasants, not because theywere Muslims. The Hindu Bengali immi-grants were equally resisted. Even other im-migrant groups like the Nepali grazers andex-tea garden settlers were opposed to theEast Bengal immigrants. The clash over landbetween indigenous tribal and non-tribalpeasants and the immigrants’ contest overgrazing lands between Nepalis and tribals,Nepalis and East Bengal immigrants, are wellnarrated. It also discusses the Line Systemand the acrimony over it, the political com-petition for its abolition as well as retention,policy of eviction of immigrants and distri-bution of lands to the landless peasants.

The emergence of the Maulana of Bhasanias a powerful peasant leader of the immi-grant population and his joining the Mus-lim League transformed the politics of ruralAssam further. The idea of a Muslim domi-nated Assam being incorporated into theimminent state of Pakistan created furtheropposition to the East Bengal immigrants.This led to the emergence of Pitamber DevaGoswami as a powerful leader of the Assamesepeasantry. Here one misses a detailed dis-cussion on Ambikagiri Roy Choudhury whothough not a peasant leader did try to mo-bilize Assamese peasants over the issue. Simi-larly there is a discussion on the great de-pression. The omission of the name of HijamIrabot Singh, though this Manipuri Peasantleader represented Assam in the annual CPIconference in the 1940s, is conspicuous. Thegreat depression and deteriorating agrariancondition as well as landlord-tenant relation-ship was a fertile ground for the growth ofCommunist ideas. There is however no dis-cussion on the exact nature of the impact onthe Assamese economy but only on the po-litical impact of the event on the rural poli-tics of Assam.

Marxist literature and ideas were slowlyfinding their way to the Assamese youth, therise of RCPI with its student wing AssamProvincial Student Federation being the mostnotable. The RCPI formed the Krishak BanuaPanchayat (KBP) in May 1940 which hasbeen in the forefront of peasant mobiliza-tion since then. The KBP challenged thenationalist understanding of the peasantquestion as done by the Congress and raisedthe slogan of ‘land to the tiller’ which wasvery attractive to the Assamese peasants. Join-ing them was the Congress Socialists and CPI.The entry of poet and artist Bishnu PrasadRabha to the KBP provided it the muchneeded leadership. Unfortunately, the im-migrant, Assamese and tribal peasantry were

mobilized on communal lines. Although theauthor does not explain the reasons for sucha turn in mobilization it remains a bother inthe mind of the reader. Encouraged by theTebhaga uprising in neighbouring Bengal,the Assam Provincial Organisation Commit-tee of the CPI was organized to highlightthe problem of adhihars and landless peas-ants of Assam. KBP’s demand for the aboli-tion of absentee landlordism, zamindari andmoneylender-trader nexus reflected the ex-act nature of the problem in agrarian Assam.The Bhanguripara Resolution asking theadhihars to give only a decreased share of theirproduce to the landlords marked the milita-rization of the Assamese peasants in the back-drop of the Tebhaga movement in Bengal.The RCPI, the CPI and others joining thescene made the situation explosive in pre-Independence Assam. It compelled even lit-erary organizations like the Asom SahityaSabha to take up peasants’ issues. The ten-sions spilled over to the post-Independenceperiod signalling an impending clash be-tween the landlords and the sharecroppers.There was food scarcity and looting of foodgrains by impoverished and hungry peasants.Rural protests began to pick on non-agrar-ian issues as well.

The book closes with the abandonmentof radical agrarian programmes by the Com-munist Party and its eventual capitulationto electoral politics which left an alreadyradicalized peasantry in the lurch. When suchparties came back to take up peasant issues,organizations like the KBP had already lostits support base. The aggrieved peasants andsharecroppers had adopted legal means forredressal of their problems. The postcolonialstate had addressed some of the agrarian is-sues through legislations like the ZamindariAbolition Act 1951, Land Ceiling Act 1956etc. The turning of the agrarian question intoa nationality question marked the end of thepeasant movement in Assam for some timein the 1980s only to resurface with the turnof the century.

Arupjyoti Saikia has woven a readablestory of peasant protests in the BrahmaputraValley out of the complex process of agrarianhistory using rich archival sources colonialas well as vernacular and oral. Despite leav-ing two districts of the province out of itspurview its coverage is wide. The NankarUprising in Barak Valley is mentioned butit was only the last phase, preceded by a vio-lent episode of Tebhaga in the Valley. GirbanBiswas’s recently published work on the sub-ject has detailed the movement. Its omis-sion as well as that of the works by lateSubhash Saha and the present reviewer onthe subject is glaring too.


A critical look however will show thatthe book presents a linear story of peasantprotests in Assam. Saikia’s peasants are a ho-mogenous category constructed from the co-lonial archives. There are no layers withinthe category of ‘peasants.’ There were onlysharecropping farmers and landowners—without any other relation of production—and the contradiction between them. Thisleaves the question: is it the only elementthat constitutes the history of peasant move-ments in Assam? Is it the story of caste Hindupeasants? What about the tribal peasantswith little land rights to caste Hindu peas-ants who could get hold of pattas easily? Ifthere is just one class of peasants—why werethere fissures in the movements? Is it his-torically correct to brand all peasant move-ments as nationalistic?

Many other related questions of theo-retical and ideological importance also arise.For example, one looks for an answer in thebook as to why the immigrant and indig-enous peasantry failed to emerge as a singleforce. Were language and religion such im-portant factors in preventing the emergenceof a peasant class in Assam? The book alsofails to answer why the Assam Movement of1980 led to the disappearance of the last traceof Communists in Assam. The descriptionof the anti-foreigner movement as a ‘nation-alist’ movement could raise eyebrows. Also,the author’s attempt not to betray any ideo-logical leanings has not been very successful.

All these do not affect the quality of thebook but only raises questions about criti-cality. The fact that these questions are gen-erated from reading the book underlines itsimmense value. It has rescued the peasants’protests from being buried under various sub-nationalist currents. However, the book ismore about peasant mobilization rather thanpeasant history. This has resonance to a com-ment by Iftekhar Iqbal who in a pre-releasereview of the same book commented aboutlocating peasant resistance in Assam in post-subaltern South Asia. Indeed the book un-derlines the acute relevance of a subalternperspective in understanding peasant move-ments from the peasants’ own perspectives.

Sajal Nag is Professor in the Department of His-

tory, Assam University, Silchar.

Evolving Regional Identity

Mohammad Sajjad

THE MAKING OF A PROVINCE: SELECTDOCUMENTS ON THE CREATION OF MODERN

BIHAR, 1874-1917. VOL. I, PARTS I, II, IIIEdited by Ashok Aounshuman, Srikant, and

Abhay KumarDirectorate of Archives, Government of Bihar,

2013, `2476.00 for the set.

Among the recent works on Bihar, men-tion may be made of Vinita Damodaran

(Broken Promises, 1992), Papiya Ghosh (Com-munity and Nation, 2008), Hitendra Patel(Communalism and the Intelligentsia, 2011),Narendra Jha (The Making of Bihar, 2012),Lata Singh (Popular Translations of National-ism, 2012). Earlier, K. K. Datta’s three vol-umes of detailed narrative of the FreedomMovement in Bihar (1958) published by theGovernment of Bihar and the ComprehensiveHistory of Bihar published by Patna’s K.P.Jaiswal Research Institute (1976), and a fewmore useful works from professionally ‘lesserknown’ publication houses have also comeout like those of Umeshwari Charan (Respon-sible Government, 1985), Md. MuzaffarImam (Muslims and the Freedom Movement,1987), and Kamta Chaubey (Role of Mus-lims in the National Movement, 1990). Inaddition to that Srikant, a co-editor of thevolume under review, along with PrasannaKumar Chaudhry, has published a few well-researched works in the Hindi language.1

Archival primary sources should be pub-lished for the convenience of researchersspread across the globe. The incumbent Di-rector of the Bihar State Archives, Vijoy

Kumar, approached some academics to col-late such sources/evidences which tell thestory of the evolution of the regional iden-tity of colonial Bihar which was a precondi-tion or prerequisite for the building up ofanti-colonial nationalism in Bihar. After theMughal Emperor Akbar, the subah (province)of Bihar had lost its regional identity andmerged with that of Bengal (an elaborationof this aspect in the introductory chaptermay have been a good idea). The prefatorynotes by Vijoy Kumar makes it clear that‘the work traces the movement of the sepa-ration of Bihar from Bengal since 1874, theyear Behar Bandhu (Nagari periodical) startedappearing and goes up to 1917, the year ofthe creation of Patna University…the sourcesused are indeed extensive, ranging from un-published sources to newspaper reports, let-

ters to editors, articles, comments, extractsof books, memoirs, speeches and advertise-ments, etc.’ (p. xiv).

Using a wide range of such sources, in1964, V. C. P. Chaudhary’s Creation of Mod-ern Bihar (1964) the compilation of manysuch sources indeed make this volume (inthree parts) extremely useful for the research-ers.

Chapter one, for example, consists of docu-ments pertaining to linguistic identity forma-tion in which the passionate campaign forNagari figures very prominently. Goingthrough such documents a question may arise:What kind of socio-political tension may haveemerged because of the assertion of Nagriagainst Urdu? Interestingly, the contents (ofthe Nagari periodical Behar Bandhu broughtout by the Kharagvilas Press) are full of thewords which, from today’s perspective, wouldbe classified as Urdu words. This once againtestifies that the two ‘languages’ differed onlyin script. Most of the contents of the Nagariand Urdu newspapers pertaining to the themeof the making of the province have been takenfrom the Reports on Native Newspapers (Ben-gal). However some of the excerpts from theBehar Bandhu have been reproduced verbatimin Nagari also. It reproduces the earliest voicesseparating Bihar from Bengal which first ap-peared in the Urdu newspapers like Qasid, i.e.,the Messenger-14 February 1875, 22 January1877), Nadir-ul-Akhbar (6 June 1874), Murgh-

Book News

Political Economy of Reforms in India by RahulMukherji, part of the Oxford India Short In-troductions offers a lucid analysis making astrong case for understanding the nuancedstory of development in a chaotic democracy.Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2014,pp. 200, `275.00


e-Sulaiman (6 and 7 February, 1876). Most ofthe documents published in the volume con-sist of excerpts from English language newspa-pers like the Beharee, the Behar Times, and theBehar Herald, besides Amrit Bazar Patrika anda few others.

However, these documents are helpfulmostly for political history. The records per-taining to the land revenue administration donot fit into the scheme of the editors. Eco-nomic issues have also been left out in thisvolume. One of the greatest bottlenecks inthe economic development of Bihar has beenthe devastating floods in the ferocious riversof northern and eastern Bihar. Even after In-dependence, arguably, not enough of in-formed debates and political mobilizationshave been done on this pressing issue. Conse-quently, according to Sachidanand Sinha,Bihar became and continues as an internalcolony. Among the colonial administratorsthere were debates and correspondences onthe issues of flood control between 1850-1945.2

The newspaper reports/documents per-taining to the foundations and the politicalactivities of the organizations like the BiharHindu Sabha (founded in 1907, and revivedin 1911 in Muzaffarpur), and the Bihar Pro-vincial Muslim League (founded in 1908)are missing from the volume. Similarly thedocuments/reports/pamphlets pertaining tothe formations of the associations of thedominant and subordinated castes have alsobeen left out as also the Legislative Assem-bly/Council debates.

Similarly, some creative literary produc-tion (like, to give just one example, an Urdunovel written in 1881 and published in 1894on reforming and educating the women, Islah-un-Nesa by Rasheed-un-Nesa, 1855-1926;and the Hindi novel Chandrakanta (1888)of Devki Nandan Khatri, 1861-1913), andmultifaceted debates on such fiction and non-fiction in periodicals played their own role inthe evolution of cultural and political con-sciousness, and went a long way in creatingan urge for a separate province and eventuallyin triggering anti-colonial nationalism. Suchsources are almost completely missing in thisvolume. It is probably because the volumeconcentrates on the politics of regional iden-tity rather than on the politics of religion basedidentity.

Moreover, while this volume takes careto compile the documents pertaining to thedemand for a university in Patna, it has notaccessed such documents pertaining to mod-ern education at primary and secondary lev-els without which a holistic view of the evo-lution of political consciousness cannot beexplored adequately. It has to be kept in mind

that the political evolution of various socialgroups, howsoever through caste-based as-sociations, is a necessary component of theevolution of nationalism in India.

It would be great if the subsequent vol-umes take excerpts from another importantUrdu periodical of Patna, the Urdu IndianChronicle weekly (launched in 1818 byBisheshwar Singh, Guru Prasad Sen, andlater Md. Yahya, the husband of the novel-ist and advocate of education for women,Rasheed-un-Nesa, also got associated withit) this Urdu weekly survived till 1886, whichin its heyday was edited by Abdul GhaniWarsi and Syed Rahimuddin, (d. 1902), andthe Al Punch (launched in 1885 by SyedRahimuddin, and Syed Sharfuddin, devotedmainly to social reforms through satire,humour, and sarcasm; in early twentieth cen-tury the young prodigy Maulana Azad,1888-1958, had contributed a few columnsto Al Punch), and also from some of the short-lived news periodicals of small towns likeTirhut Samachar, Mahila Darpan, SaranSaroj, to name just a few, taken from theReports on Native Newspapers, which will giveus an idea of the political evolution of thecommunities at sub-regional levels. Extractsfrom some periodicals in Maithili, Bhojpuri,Magahi, and a few in the tribal dialects ofthe Santhal Parganas and Chhotanagpur re-gions of the then Bihar would acknowledgethe sub-regional and ethno-linguistic diver-sities of Bihar. One of the most fiercely anti-colonial periodicals was Musheer-e-Bihar, anUrdu weekly (1913-15). It had to face manyonslaughts from the colonial state, becauseof which it could not survive for long. It istherefore desirable that excerpts from thisshould be reproduced from the Reports onNative Newspapers.

The editors and the Bihar State Archivesdeserve appreciation for this great effort.

Endnotes

1Bihar Mein Samajik Parivartan Ke KuchAayaam, 1912-1990, Delhi: Vaani,2001;Swarg Par Dhawa: Bihar Mein DalitAndolan, 1912-2000, Delhi: Vaani, 2005;1857: Bihar, Jharkhand Mein Mahayudh,Delhi: Rajkamal, 2008.2 See Praveen Singh, ‘The Colonial State,Zamindars, and the Politics of Flood Con-trol in North Bihar, 1850-1945’, Indian Eco-nomic and Social History Review (IESHR), Vol.45, no. 2, 2008, pp. 239–59.

Mohammad Sajjad is Assistant Professor at the

Centre of Advanced Study in History, Aligarh Mus-

lim University, Aligarh.


The Story in Vignettes

Sucharita Sengupta

THE OXFORD ANTHOLOGY OF THE MODERNINDIAN CITY (TWO VOLUMES): THE CITY IN ITS

PLENITUDE /MAKING AND UNMAKING THE CITY:POLITICS, CULTURE AND LIFE FORMS

Edited by Vinay LalOxford University Press, New Delhi, 2013,pp. xlvi+382, pp. xlvii+469, `950.00 each.

Long before the city became trendy, therewas the Indian city. It existed in our

colourful and incredible mythology. It existedwhen the first of human civilization took rooton the subcontinent. It was central to themultiple kingdoms that flourished from cornerto corner in this vast land for centuries. Yet,when we gained Independence, our self-imageas a country was one that was largely bucolic.Perhaps, the take-over of existing cities orcreation of new ones by the British, markingthem out as centres of arrogant power, turnedthem into places of revulsion and fear? Or wasit Gandhi’s distaste for what the citypurportedly bore—modernity of the westernsort—and his fantasies of village republics thatetched the village as the desirable polaropposite in the minds of his admirers? In themidst of such idle speculations, the factremains that the urbane was as much part ofIndian spatiality and life as the rustic.

A lot of post-liberalization chatter about‘urbanizing India’ could easily lead one tobelieve though that this is the first time everthat such a phenomenon is occurring. Perhapsthis has to do with the construction of swishgated community style housing, glass-frontedoffice buildings, multi-brand retail malls, and

other amenities, all in the service of a notionof the ‘good life’ akin to what you’d find inthe West, or in any comparable ‘world city’.The enchanted world that rapidly urbanizingIndia wants to live in is the one hypothesizedby Saskia Sassen as the global city, a placeteeming with technocrats, cogs in the wheelof the multinational firm, working tirelesslyto make the city an engine of a certain type ofeconomic growth. These little city republicswill be more at ease with other such cityrepublics across the world. Looking outwardsto create a network society of the kindanticipated by Manuel Castells, where moneyand information flows seamlessly, they willsoon rise above and apart from what bindsthem to the rest of the country, or thehinterland.

Mistaking good analysis for good models,urban planning in India has gone about tryingto plant replica global cities on local soil, withthe haste of the White Rabbit, cryingplaintively, Oh dear! Oh dear! I shall be toolate! Quite expectedly, this has had some ratherpeculiar results, not least of all in terms ofwhat expectations to have of a modern Indian

city. Even as we struggle to find an answer tothat question, it is worthwhile to take a lookback at what an Indian city has looked likeand meant to people down the ages. It is notwith revivalist hubris, but with the aim ofcontextualization, that we need to embarkupon the search for the heart and soul of theIndian city.

Vinay Lal’s superlative anthology in twovolumes provides exactly this—the story ofthe Indian city in vignettes. The anthologycomprises essays, stories, poetry, lyrics,cinema, diary entries, speeches and reports,by the widest variety of authors possible, allproviding insights about the city. Every rasafinds a place, and as soon as you finish readingone extract, you are on to the next where themood has changed entirely.

Mark Twain moves across India, goggleeyed at the sights that meet his eyes. Colourfulattire upon the bronze bodies of Indian menand women, business and leisure, life, death,thuggery, sin and salvation, all were on opendisplay. Twain, rarely short of words, is sobemused that the note of perennial surprisenever leaves his writing. As the city evokesromance, it also evokes hope and distress.Delhi, ruined as many times as it was built,evokes melancholy each time a raider plundersand kills, leaving behind nothing but a shellmarked with intermittent grandeur. Lucknow,where pleasure and culture received theirmeanings, is a glory alive only in memory.Elsewhere, Tagore is dealing with the deepanxiety that migration to city from villagecauses, for it means loss of a familiar home,traditions, bonds and often, of the self too.But the newness, energy and power of athrobbing, pulsing city is a space ofunimagined possibilities, and he expresses afervent desire to flow along.

The shape of the city is defined by itsplanning and architecture, as well as the socialmatrix that such planning spawns. TheBritish, for instance, not only needed to stamptheir superiority upon Indian cities using theirarchitectural traditions, but also discipline thechaos. Their own living quarters were enclaveson the edges of existing cities, to the extentpossible built in the image of cities on theisle. But our cities proved to be far less pliantthan anticipated. Ahmedabad, with its ownbuilt in traditions, catered to both aestheticsand utility, and there seemed little use indisturbing it. Calcutta and several other citieswent on a name-changing spree in an effortto delete its colonial past. But instead of using

this opportunity to develop a rooted, organicculture of planning, our cities have swervedbetween the authoritarian, sterile andbureaucratic built environment, such as incentral Delhi and Chandigarh, or one wherewe are simply trying too hard. The mindlessincorporation of a variety of European stylisticelements such as gothic, baroque andRomanesque has resulted in buildings thatscream vanity and poor taste all in one stroke,in a style that Gautam Bhatia refers to as baniabaroque.

Post-liberalization, there has been agrowth of highly weather-inappropriate officeand shopping spaces at a fungal rate. Ascitizens carry out daily social and economicactivities in enclosed spaces, street cultures areslowly vanishing, as Arjun Appaduraidocuments. The stark loneliness of the streetshave made them much more prone to violence,and shrunk what has been a vibrant publicsphere. Despite these changes, the city of theimagination resiliently lives on. Banaras willlive in imagination as the city of death. Thefinal destination for a devout Hindu is notsome vague space beyond, but right here, inthis holy city. Despite the fact that Cochinwas cosmopolitan much before Bombay, it isthe latter that has made its mark in memory.Majrooh Sultanpuri has immortalized thethrilling risks of being in the city in the songYeh Hai Bombay Meri Jaan. Amitava Kumar’sPatna is a place where ennui forces its residentsto either run away or join politics.

Strange things happen too. KaliprasannaSinha observes the Indian in thrall of all thingsBritish in 19th century Calcutta. The


anglicized Bengali babu is a peculiar creaturethat sits at table and chair, drinks tea fromcups and serves alcohol from decanters, thepathetic wannabe who is a subject of enter-taining satire. In 21st century Delhi, a Monkey-man makes an appearance. It terrorizesunsuspecting people at nights, but limits itsfear-mongering activities to northern andeastern parts of Delhi. In Chennai, inventivefrauds are carried out daily, such as curing ofpiles and doubling of gold. Sexuality isconstantly at work and under assault in thecity. The hijras, or eunuchs, once a group thatreceived patronage from emperors and heldimportant posts, are reduced to a reviled sexualminority whose members live off begging. Foryoung lovers, the slightest hint of the carnalcan bring on harassment, whether one livesin a poncy area with nosy neighbours, or aretoo poor to display affection anywhere exceptin public parks and beaches.

Harassment and violence are in fact apersistent feature in cities, which have beenthe stage for some of the most heinouscommunal violence in recent times. The anti-Sikh pogrom in Delhi, the Bombay blasts andGujarat riots, all happened in cities, makinga big dent in the claim that urbanization makesidentity politics irrelevant. In Srinagar, thecontinuous state of siege has undonebeautifully calibrated social relations amongHindus and Muslims. Violence takes on otherforms too. Bhisham Sahni’s chilling storyBasanti layers gendered violence with class

violence between the underdogs and the urbanelite encapsulated in the dynamics of slumdemolition. The slums, Ashis Nandy postu-lates, are ‘parts of the city that constantlyremind us of our moral and social obligations’.The material translation of these obligationsto the underclass has been, to put it politely,highly ineffective. It is a story of lives andlivelihoods snatched by loss of employment,and inaccessibility to basic services such asfood, water and medical care.

The destructive tendencies though, havenot completely ridden roughshod over creativeimpulses. Art and culture found a fertilelaboratory in the space of the city, rising,wavering, falling, like musical notes. Visitorsfind music in the call of the street-hawker andthe beggar. Cheeky poetry was the favouredmode of subversion in colonial Calcutta. Theless well-off neighbourhoods of Mumbai havemusic and theatre groups that cater to theentertainment of the working-class using folkforms such as the tamasha. Art forms werenot the preserve of the elite, though the onesthat became bankable were the ones that werepatronized by the elite. Parsi Theatre, whichprovided the blueprint for Hindi cinema, wasfunded by wealthy Parsi businessmen inBombay. The music season in Chennai toocaters mostly to a small and highly specializedaudience, despite the presence of several musicsabhas. Other cultures though have dwindledaltogether. Dastangoi, the art of Urdustorytelling, a favourite way to pass the time

A Panoramic View

Pritam Singh

in cities like Delhi and Lucknow, was lost tillvery recently, when Mahmood Farooqui andDanish Husain painstakingly resurrected it.Bird-fighting and kite-flying were not so luckyin an age where the buffet of pleasurablepursuits has expanded considerably. Neitherwas the Banarasi bahari alang, where simplystepping out for daily toilette was an elaborate,leisurely ritual.

Contrasting this rich anthology withgovernment or corporate generated reports onurbanization bring home the fact that thereis much that is being missed in ourunderstanding of how, what and who makeup the Indian city, and in what ways. Thecity is not just an economic engine for theelite, but also for the underclass. The city is,in fact, not just an economic engine, but asocial and cultural net. Indian urban spacesare becoming highly exclusivist and prone toinstrumental economic rationality. Funnilyenough, we have imbibed the worst of the‘world class’ city model, without caring a figfor the best, case in point being preser-vationof local ecology and historical heritage. VinayLal’s work serves as a powerful reminder torescue the city from this one dimensionalconceptualization and create it as a space fordiversity and vibrancy that is fulfilling for itsresidents.

Sucharita Sengupta is Assistant Professor in the

Department of Political Science, Jamia Millia Islmia,

New Delhi.

CATCH UP: DEVELOPING COUNTRIES IN THEWORLD ECONOMYBy Deepak Nayyar

Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013,pp. xvii+221, price not stated.

The book under review is fascinatingand disappointing at the same time. It

is a masterly survey of the developmental andeconomic history literature on the signifi-cant changes that have taken place in theglobal economy over a long historical periodstretching into many centuries. The data thathas been carefully used and analysed comesfrom reliable sources, mostly UN data.Deepak Nayyar, a Left Keynesian who be-

longs to the developmental state school ofthought in the field of development econom-ics has not only surveyed global economichistory but also brilliantly summarized themain contributions to development econom-ics in the field of industrialization that is thefocus of this study.

The central contribution of work is intwo fields: one, it provides a panoramic viewof the rise and fall of nations in the tradition

of the work which Angus Maddison is mostfamous for, and two, it critiques the neo-lib-eral paradigm that still remains hegemonicin development literature in spite of a seri-ous setback that the triumphalism of theparadigm has suffered in the wake of the re-cent multipronged crisis of global capital-ism (For my examination of this multi-pronged crises, see ‘Contemporary GlobalCapitalism: Multi-pronged crises’, Economicand Political Weekly, October 11, 2008). Along term historical viewpoint of the eco-nomic rise and fall of nations shatters themyth, that ‘western nations’ have any inher-ent superiority in technological inventions,innovations and development. Nayyar hasmade a use of the key data and findings fromMaddison’s studies to demonstrate that manycountries, most importantly China and In-dia, had a far more important place in the

world economy than many western econo-mies in the period from 1000 to 1820.China, India and many other developingeconomies are now regaining the place in theeconomy which they once had and had lostin the wake of the Industrial Revolution, itsspread effects to western Europe, and the riseof colonialism and imperialism. In examin-ing the successful experiences of industrial-ization, Nayyar has been able to demonstratevery effectively the enabling role of the state,and through that he provides a robust andreasoned critique of the neo-liberal paradigmthat extols the virtues of ‘free’ markets andliberal regimes of free trade.

In the discussion on the structuralchange from primary and secondary to ter-tiary sectors in the process of industrializa-tion and economic development Nayyar pro-vides a very useful insight that structural


change is necessary but not sufficient to driveeconomic growth. He writes: ‘The directionof causation does run in both directions butit is strong and positive only in countrieswhere there are virtuous circles of cumula-tive causation that reflect success in devel-opment’ (p 102). In his formulation on thelearning experience from colonialism for in-dustrialization, he writes: ‘… colonialismwas also a source of manufacturing experi-ence, from the British in India, Malaysia,Egypt and China, from the Dutch in Indo-nesia, or from the Japanese in Manchuria(China), Korea and Taiwan. For South Af-

rica, manufacturing experience came througha mix of migrant individuals, colonialism andforeign firms.’ In the transformation of theglobal capitalist economy, it is absolutelyright to see the dialectical and contradictoryrole of colonialism than remain content withmere condemnation of colonialism.

On the increasing role (catching up) ofthe erstwhile developing economies in themaking of the global capitalist economy andits future consequences, though Nayyarmakes an admirable critique of neo-liberal-ism, he remains orthodox in his understand-ing of the key role of ecology in the currentglobal context. His view of development re-mains trapped in the orthodox notion of de-velopment in terms of increasing industrial-ization, rising GDP and per capita income.The entry of ecology in the development lit-erature has fundamentally questioned thisorthodox paradigm of development. Nayyarmakes a brief mention in one paragraph ofthe environmental consequences of the de-velopment experience of the developingeconomies. If the threat of global climatechange and global warming has to be ad-dressed, environment cannot be just one addon chapter in alternative paths of develop-ment. Ecology has to be made central tothe analytical structure. It is this absenceof ecology in Nayyar’s otherwise superbbook that leads to his failure to see the im-portance of an alternative path of develop-ment being pursued in some of the LatinAmerican countries such as Bolivia, Ecua-dor, Nicaragua and Uruguay. These coun-tries are not only questioning the neo-lib-

eral paradigm, they are going much furtherin questioning the whole edifice of orthodoxmodels of development that are bereft of ecol-ogy. Many of them label their path of de-velopment eco-socialism which is a critiquealso of the old style socialism that mirroredcapitalism in its uncritical focus on indus-trialization.

Nayyar’s justifiable praise of the role ofthe enabling state in the march of the na-tions towards industrialization can be fruit-fully re-employed to the enabling role of thestate in ecologically oriented paths of devel-opment. It is undeniable that the marketmechanism with focus on profit cannot besuccessfully used in a systematic and com-prehensive fashion to build an ecologicallycompatible economy. This does not meanthat individual companies cannot pursueecologically oriented modes of economic ac-tivities and where they do, such initiativesneed to be welcomed. However, a compre-hensive move towards ecologically orientedpaths of development cannot be accommo-dated in the capitalist mode of accumula-tion. If works such as Nayyar’s encourage newgenerations of economists to build upon suchcontributions to develop models of eco-so-cialist economies in the developing econo-mies, then they can aim at going beyondthe goal of catching up with the old indus-trialized countries.

Pritam Singh is Professor in the Department of

Accounting, Finance and Economics at the Oxford

Brookes University.

A Gigantic Framework

Pooja Paswan

PANCHAYATI RAJBy Kuldeep Mathur

Oxford India Short Introductions, New Delhi,2013, pp. 224, `195.00

The book under review opens with a con-ceptual framework for understanding

local governance as it flows through the re-gions of good governance, decentralization andreforms in India. He has reiterated the factthat there is a vital need to shift the focusfrom ‘government’ to ‘governance’, there-by,emphasizing decentralization rather than del-egation.

The author talks about Mahatma Gandhi’sdream of creating economically and politi-cally self-reliant networks of villages to meetthe basic needs of the people. He stressed onincreasing the productivity of the local re-

sources to escalate export and reduce theirdependence on import. A very significantissue of the dominance of the Centre andthe State Government, thereby, reducing

their role as a secondary organization, is high-lighted.

The author then traces the trajectory ofthe evolution of the Panchayati Raj systemas we see today from community develop-ment programme to the 73rd Amendmentvia the recommendations of the Balwant RaiMehta committee and the formation of thethree tier structure of panchayats. It elabo-rately discusses the different perspectives ofthe Congress and the Janta Party ondemocractic decentralization from 1957 to1990.

The chapter on the institutional struc-ture and election mechanism of panchayatspoints out the significance of Gram Sabhain the districts and how it has been used to

facilitate centrally sponsored schemes. It alsodiscusses the importance of mobilizing localsupport through the panchayati raj electionsand the increases in the participation of dif-ferent communities of SC/ST and OBCthrough reservation of seats. This issue hasbeen explicitly dealt with in the book. Itendorses the reservation of seats for disad-vantaged sections of society, particularlywomen, to address the problem of genderdisparity in India by expanding the demo-cratic base of women. It deals with the struc-tural constraints of participation in decisionmaking by women, dalits and other tribalgroups. It explores the wide ambit of thePanchayat Extension to Schedule Area(PESA) which imparts the tribal groups with


Parodying A RealityRumki Basu

legislations to protect their natural resourcesand act as a stakeholders in their develop-ment. The chapter illustrates the incidenceof the tussle between multinational corpo-rations backed by the government and thetribals’ attachment towards their natural re-sources. It highlights the dilemma of thetribals, who when left stranded by their owngovernment against the war with the MNCs,took up arms in what has now come to beknown as the Naxalite Movement.

The author explores the issue of financialmobilization of the Panchayati Raj system tohighlight the role of the machinery providedby the constitutional framework such as theState Finance Commission and the NationalFinance Commission. He further discusses thereluctance of the state to devolve financialpowers to the local government through theDistrict Planning Committees to make themas autonomous as possible.

The penultimate chapter of the bookhighlights the existence and importance of par-allel organizations such as NGOs or civil so-cieties in the process of democratic decentrali-zation at the village level. It also acknowledgesthe influence of caste panchayat which miti-gates the purpose of the constitutional man-date.

The book provides in conclusion an intro-spective outlook to the gigantic framework ofthe Panchayati Raj system. The author hasraised vital questions pointing out the lacunaein the functioning of the executive and the leg-islature. He has also provided meaningful in-sights and suggestions to bridge the gap be-tween the administration and the aspirations.

Pooja Paswan is Assistant Professor, Public Ad-

ministration, Department of Political Science, Jamia

Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

ECONOMIC OFFENCES: A COMPENDIUM OFCRIMES IN PROSE AND VERSE

By S. SubramanianOxford University Press, New Delhi, 2013,

pp.159, `495.00

The back page write up on this book readsthus: ‘A compendium in Prose and Verse

of Crimes perpetrated after office hours onsundry aspects of economy and society by alapsed social scientist in the cause of expand-ing the horizons and shaping the values ofyoung and unpromising scholars.’

A major part of this book was written overthe year 2000-01. Many of the ‘perpetratedcrimes’ (specifically parts or versions of Chap-ters 1-6, 9-10, 12 & 22) appeared in TheHindu Sunday Magazine. Economic Offencesa collection of 22 pieces is a satirical socialcommentary on contemporary India (‘IndiaShining’ or ‘India Rising’, as the case maybe) employing parody for ventilating numer-ous ‘dissatisfactions’ with the world around,but with just one end in view: that the youngrecipient minds, may, with an unique com-bination of intelligence and morality learn tocomprehend, cope, overcome and eventuallysucceed in life. Amen!

The book is haunted by the ghosts of sev-eral men—but most of all by P.G. Wodehousewho is undoubtedly the author’s friend, phi-losopher and guide. What is the consciousdesign driving the production of these liter-ary pieces? Are they the pompous outpour-ings of the ‘post Midnight’s Children genera-tion’ who are too old not to feel an almostembittered frustration over the gradual disso-

and number one in the International Cricketratings. But are these truly the elements thatought to go into the making of the Idea ofIndia? Economic Offences affords the reader anopportunity to ponder on what is the mostpatriotic ambition an Indian citizen can en-tertain for the country in the 21st century.Read on, and you will know.

The Fuzzy Thinker (the author) is incred-ibly funny in introducing deadly serious is-sues like globalization, human development,social capital, taxation, inflation or the con-cept of poverty. His sense of fun dancesthrough in both prose and verse time andagain to entertain the reader.

The rationale for writing this book hasbeen summed up in these uncannily percep-tive lines: ‘These are fraught times to livethrough, with so much pressure on you tosucceed, as you will recall from your hourlyexperience of Mummy’s hysterical promise tothrottle, first, you, and, then, herself becauseof her inability to live down the tragedy ofthe news that one of your cousins has alreadypassed the SAT exam, a second has crammedeverything on offer from three separate tuto-rial coaching centers, and a third one’s fatheris fully prepared to bribe his son’s way throughengineering college.’

To all ‘abysmal, uncaring, shameless in-considerate blots on the family’, the book isvalue for money. The reviewer’s personalfavourite is chapter 17 for the humorous versesand the unmatched rhyming couplets in ‘AnA to Z of the Lives and Times of Economistsin Jolly Rhymes’. Buy the compendium andenjoy the verses.

Rumki Basu is a Professor in the Department of

Political Science, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi.

lution of their youthful dreams for India? Orare they a depressed and ill tempered econo-mist’s Wodehousian means (admittedly notavantgarde) of coming to terms with India’spostcolonial condition? The reader can de-cide.

Many of the pieces in this book may ap-pear dated today, some refer to specific eventssuch as constitutional review, unsavoury ar-mament deals, match fixing in cricket etc.which are now memories of things past. I per-sonally am of the opinion that any time is arelevant time for dealing with national afflic-tions such as casteism, communalism, region-alism and corruption.

In the last decade or so, certain sectionsof India’s elite have come to consider it as amatter of right for India to be recognized, inquick succession, as a superpower, a perma-nent member of the U.N. Security Council


Ethnographic Explorations

Renu Addlakha

DISABILITY, GENDER AND STATE POLICY:EXPLORING MARGINS

By Nilika MehrotraRawat Publications, Jaipur, 2013, pp. 304,

`895.00

This work is a collection of essays writtenover the past decade exploring the issue

of disability, culture and society in the In-dian context. The author is a sociologistworking in one of the leading universities inthe country giving the area of social scienceresearch and writing on disability an aca-demic respectability that is sorely lacking atthe present conjuncture. Notwithstandingthe academic moorings of the author, thestyle of the work is highly accessible to a layaudience, rendering it an invaluable contri-bution to both the domains of serious schol-arship and public discourse on disability inthe country. Discussions on the multiplesocial, political and economic factors con-tributing to the rise of this category are jux-taposed with ethnographic explorations ofconcrete experiences of disablement in ur-ban and rual areas.

The first chapter delineates the multi-dimensional concept of disability both his-torically and in its contemporary manifesta-tions, summarizing the different theoreticalmultidisciplinary perspectives on the theme.One of the more interesting issues raised bythe author in this regard is the idea of a SouthAsian perspective on disability that bothchallenges and carries forward the ideas pro-posed by western scholars. ‘Disability, State

policy and NGOs in India’ begins with adetailed discussion of disability legislationin the United States, the United Kingdom,and Australia, as also the United Nation’sengagement with disability through the clas-sificatory systems proposed by the WorldHealth Organisation (WHO), and more re-cently the Convention on the Rights of Per-sons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). The lat-ter half of the chapter focuses on disabilityprevalence, laws and policies in India, fol-lowed by a short discussion on NGO workin the disability sector with particular refer-ence to the State of Haryana. In fact, theissue of NGO involvement is a central themewhich examines the emergence of the dis-ability rights movement in the country sincethe 1990s. It discusses the contested rela-

tionship between disability rights activismand the state.

The following four chapters are the mostinteresting because they engage with disabil-ity in the specific socio-economic and cul-tural context of rural Haryana showing themultiple meanings attributed to the conceptand its experiences within local communi-ties. Individual experiences of disablement,culturally embedded strategies of supportand care and the ongoing engagement of theState in the sector are highlighted. The eth-nographic and gender lens deployed in theanalysis in these chapters shows not only howpatriarchy both exacerbates the experienceof disability but also creates specific cracksin discourses and institutions allowing forthe exercise of agency. The author carries for-ward further the disability-culture-genderanalysis by specifically focussing on the is-sue of women and psychosocial disability inurban contexts. The last chapter is more inthe nature of a conclusion highlighting themacro-level reality of disability with regardto services like education and employment,and in relation to other marginalized groupslike dalits and the state policies put forwardfor their upliftment. The disability-caste in-terface is particularly important.

The methodological approach of thework is very inviting. The author managessuccessfully to marry different facets of thedisability reality (medical, social, economic,political, cultural, personal) with multiplelevels of analysis (micro-level, community-level, national and international). Discus-sions on families and households in villagesof Haryana sit comfortably with the analysisof globalization and its impact on the psy-chosocial experiences of women in urban cen-tres of developing countries. Since the essayscover a wide canvas—urban and rural loca-tions, national—level laws and policies andlocal-level NGO interventions, personal ex-periences of marginalization and violence,community responses and coping strategies,they highlight the diverse realities of the cat-egory of disability in its intersection withother variables, such as gender, caste, familystructure composition socio-economic status,residence, etc.

The most engaging part of the book liesin the accounts of individuals with disabili-ties and their families as they live their liveswithin local communities. These narratives


highlight not only the nitty-gritty of whatit means to be a disabled woman, man (and/or person) in a specific socio-cultural milieu,but also how such individuals and their fami-lies negotiate on a lifelong basis with the limi-tations and constraints imposed by such amilieu. For instance, in the chapter ‘Disabil-ity, Sorority and Social Space’ Mehrotrashows how female siblings become the main-stay of care and support for their sisters withdisabilities even after their marriage. In ‘Ex-ploring Constructs of Intellectual Disabilityand Personhood in Haryana’, the author en-gages specifically with the notion of mascu-linity and the manner in which intellectu-ally disabled male adults are feminized andinfantilized. The fact that this often happensin very poor families shows the resilience ofsocial structures and patriarchal ideologiesin the face of adversity.

An intersectional perspective on disabil-ity is both influenced by and influences thegeneral study of marginality and inequalityin contemporary Indian society in an era ofneo-liberal economics and accelerated socialand technological change. For instance, poli-cies of affirmative action like reservation,which configure the Indian state’s discoursesand practices for social uplift of marginalizedgroups like the scheduled castes and sched-uled tribes since Independence, are also be-ing tailored for contesting exclusion of per-sons with disabilities. Then, while on theone hand technology is facilitating the em-ployment opportunities for persons with dis-abilities in the privately run business-pro-cessing sector (BPO ), there is a simultaneousfall in their recruitment in the public sectordue to the greater contractualization of

labour. And since the state is the largest em-ployer of persons with disabilities, this hasan adverse impact on availability of employ-ment opportunities for this group. Indeed,the administrative (and increasingly aca-demic) category of social exclusion bringstogether multiple marginalities andmarginalized groups.

Historically, what have now come to becalled non-governmental organizations(NGOs) have played a dominant role in man-agement of disability across the world. Whileearlier religious and philanthropic groupsprovided care and support services, presentlyNGOs not only provide medical, educationaland vocational services but also dialogue withthe state on behalf of persons with disabili-ties. While Mehrotra takes the rise of thedisability rights movement from the 1990smore or less as a given, one is led to askwhether there is actually a disability rightsmovement in India. Are the likages betweendifferent disability organizations under theumbrella of a cross-disability paradigmbacked by ideological conviction or are theymerely pragmatic strategies deployed as bar-gaining chips with the state?

While the author explicitly advocates de-veloping a South Asian perspective on dis-ability, the fact that most of her materialcomes from specific rural and urban loca-tions in Haryana opens up the much neededpossibility of area-specific studies on disabil-ity. This is an important direction of researchin a diverse country like India.

A number of the essays in this book havebeen published elsewhere but no citationshave been provided in this connection. Suchinformation would be helpful in marking theevolution of the author’s thoughts on the is-sue over the years. This is particularly im-portant because the intricate linkages be-tween the issues covered in the differentchapters get lost or appear as repetitions tothe uninformed reader in the absence of achronological ordering of the material..

Renu Addlakha is Professor and Deputy Director

at the Centre for Women’s Development Studies,

New Delhi.

Human Action, Consciousness and Problems ofRepresentation by Geeta Ramana looks at thevarious dimensions of action with a view toanalysing the different interpretations asmore than mere linguistic tools.Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014,pp. 265, `895.00

Book News


Nothing Is, But What Is Not

Baran Farooqi

SHAKESPEARE AND THE ART OF LYINGEdited by Shormishtha Panja

Orient BlackSwan, New Delhi, 2013, pp. 233,price not stated.

The nature of poetry has always been heldto be fictive. That is, it doesn’t record

or report facts; and even if it is recording orreporting facts, the poet’s creative imagina-tion works on them in such a way that thequality of factualness recedes into the back-ground. Hence, Shelley’s famous observationin his A Defense of Poetry, that poetry makesfamiliar things unfamiliar and unfamiliarthings familiar.

Since the very basis of human imagina-tion is a power to collect different things andto give them, in Shakespeare’s words, ‘a localhabitation and a name’, literary theoristshave always been curious about this qualityof poetry. How does it come about that thetenth century Arab critic and literary theo-rist Qudama Ibn-e Ja’afar was compelled toobserve that ‘the most admirable or best po-etry is that which is most false’? Qudamadidn’t elaborate this but made it obvious thatpoetic activity was of the nature of lying, andit is interesting to see Shakespeare six centu-

ries later making an almost similar observa-tion, ‘The truest poetry is the most feign-ing…’ (As You Like It).

The book under review is the result ofa seminar on the theme of ‘Shakespeare andthe Art of Lying’, co-organized by the In-dian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS) andthe Shakespeare Society of India. This themewas chosen easily out of a list of ten pro-posed themes as, according to Peter RonaldDe Souza who has written the Foreword, itwas unanimously attractive as a choice. Ed-ited by Shormishtha Panja, the volume con-tains a total of eleven essays whose contribu-tors hark from India, the USA, Germany andNorway. As one reads the book, one findsthat in some cases the word ‘lying’ in thetitle could be almost successfully exchangedfor poetry, but in some other cases, theauthor(s) have addressed the case ofShakespeare’s characters actually ‘lying’ ormisrepresenting the facts and that the ‘ly-ing’ may sometimes not only upset the ap-parently natural scheme of things but alsogo on to suggest that a lie can come back tohurt the liar. Gangeya Mukherji’s article, forinstance, called, ‘The Evil of Lying and the‘Perception’ of Truth’ seeks to examine the‘categories’ as well as the nature of truth. Theuntruth of Goneril and Regan is taken bytheir father to be the truth, and in fact thedesired truth, but before the end of the playwe see that their untruth destroys them andthe complexity of the matter is that Cordelia

too is destroyed, even though she told thetruth.

As Panja tells you in the Introduction,the theme of lying is not being applied toShakespeare’s works alone but Classical, Bib-lical and Renaissance notions of falsehoodand truth are also brought under discussionand the subject has been treated in all pos-sible varieties. Sir Thomas More, Machiavelliand Montaigne are some writers whose worksare referred to time and again to explicatethe meaning and nature of truth as also tomake sense of what Shakespeare might be,albeit unconsciously, showing an influenceof. However, her motivation for setting upthis topic as a theme for an entire seminar,and later, an entire book, has more to dowith questions which deal with Shakespeare’smental universe as it gets reflected in hisworks, both poetic drama as well as longpoems and sonnets. Did Shakespeare regardtruth as ever being attainable, that is, did hethink of truth in absolute terms or was truthcontingent and ‘relative’ to him? How post-structuralist was he in his understanding ofthe nature of language and its successes andfailures? One wonders whether Panja couldhave avoided the use of the word ‘post-struc-turalist’ and yet granted Shakespeare a sen-sibility which was post-structuralist-likewithout necessarily using the term? Therecould be a couple of more instances whereone could complain of Panja showing the con-ceitedness of being a postmodern critic, bur-dening Shakespeare with jargonized adjec-tives just to make him sound even more ex-citing, despite the fact that she finds himexciting enough without the jargon!

But this is about the only flaw in an oth-erwise interesting and fulfilling volume ofessays about truth and lying in Shakespeare.Panja’s own essay, which deals withsprezzatura (a kind of dissimulation or non-chalance) the code of behaviour and conver-sation suitable for courtiers, examines howdissimulation works in linguistic exchangesbetween interlocutors of varying social posi-tion and how indirect and coded communi-cation is part of the very fabric of language.She takes this discussion further to show howthe same principle operates in several of thepoems as well as specific sonnets, like Son-net numbers 57, 58 and 94. R.W. Desai’sarticle on Shakespeare’s ‘Phoenix and the

Turtle’ as well as Stuart Sillers’ essay on ‘Iden-tity, Rhetoric and Convention inShakespeare’s Art of Lying’ also show howlies become truths through poetic, read fic-tive, treatment.

How lying is a quality of gender is ex-plained beautifully in Swati Ganguly’s ar-ticle on ‘Lying and Truth Telling’ in Othello.Matters of truth become matters of powerequations between master and servant, manand wife as Ganguly’s essay explains Emilia’srole in the tragic destiny of Othello andDesdemona. Apart from the essays onShakespeare’s poetry and some other textslike Arcadia etc, The Art of Lying has threeessays on Hamlet, three essays which dealwith gender and subordination, and one eachon Twelfth Night and Midsummer Night’sDream. Glaringly absent is anything onShakespeare’s Macbeth, which contains thefamous statement, ‘nothing is, but what isnot’. The same play has a Porter’s Scene inwhich a drunken porter describes drink assomething which ‘provokes’ and ‘unprovokes’the drinker, it ‘provokes the desire, but takesaway the performance’ and in the process‘gives him the lie, and leaves him’.

The last two essays which provide thebook with its philosophical and very essen-tial base, incidentally were not part of theSimla seminar but the editor has deliberately


(and happily for the reader) included thesearticles in the volume. Bijoy Boruah’s article‘Literary Fiction and the Art of Verisimili-tude’ is an extremely well written and lucidexplanation of the whole business of the fic-tive, and therefore false nature of literature,and precisely because of these qualities, itsindispensability. Boruah argues for fiction asa prime source for knowledge, saying, ‘…fic-tive adequacy is measured by the work’spower to evoke appreciation of underlyingsignificance of life, it is necessaray at timesto engage in the exploration of possibleworlds in unusual and even extraordinaryways. Such possible worlds, even the far-fetched ones, are graded to be plausible fic-tions, or fictional representations to the ex-tent they prove to be revelatory of humansignificance’. Gert Hofman’s essay about the-atre as a vehicle for philosophy examinesHamlet in the light of Neitzsche and is ableto argue that ‘…under the catalytic condi-tions of theatre it can be easily shown whatremains often veiled in real life: all visions oftranscendent truth only arise from the abyssesand clefts of an ongoing contingent experi-ence that affects and challenges the perse-verance and will power of living humanity.’One recalls Nietzsche’s statement of truthbeing a ‘mobile army of metaphors’!

Shakespeare and the Art of Lying onceagain illustrates how Shakespeare is the cre-ator of a world where everything is uncer-tain, that is, no conclusions can be derivedabout the nature of people or society or poli-tics. This may also mean that the wayShakespeare has constructed his world con-tains the possibility that is making an evenbigger statement about the whole world: ‘lifeis but a walking shadow’. This, if true, wouldmake Shakespeare the greatest liar because iflife is but a walking shadow, then even thisgnomic statement becomes questionable. Inthe words of Duncan, (Macbeth’s Kingwhom he later assassinates): There is no artto find the mind’s construction in the face.

Baran Farooqi teaches English Literature at Jamia

Millia Islamia. Her interests include translating

from the Urdu into English and Women’s Studies.

Book News

Subalternity, Exclusion and Social Change inIndia edited by Ashok K. Pankaj and Ajit K.Pandey captures ideology, knowledge andpower as forces of subaltern reproduction inIndian society and maps the dominant tra-jectories of emancipation and assertionadopted by different social groups.Foundation Books/Cambridge UniversityPress, New Delhi, 2014, pp. 375, `895.00

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