Studies in Indian Politics最新文献

{"title":"Editorial","authors":"Suhas Palshikar","doi":"10.1177/23210230211058542","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211058542","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-11-17","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45738937","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Did the Poona Pact Disenfranchise the ‘Depressed Classes’? An Analysis of the 1936–1937 and 1945–1946 Provincial Elections","authors":"S. Biswas","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043025","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043025","url":null,"abstract":"This article contests the conventional view that the ‘Depressed Classes’ lost out on representation by agreeing to joint electorates in the Poona Pact. It analyses the results of the elections to the provincial legislatures in British India that took place in 1936–1937 and 1945–1946 under the Government of India Act, 1935, to concretely appraise the working of the Poona Pact. The article argues that reserved seats, primary elections and cumulative voting redeemed the ability of the Poona Pact to provide both descriptive and substantive representation for the ‘Depressed Classes’.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41583504","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Concepts, Methods and Indian Politics: A Conversation with Sudipta Kaviraj","authors":"Hilal Ahmed","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043041","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043041","url":null,"abstract":"The study of Indian politics, especially in the conventional disciplinary framework of political science, is often differentiated from what is called political theory. Indian politics, more generally, refers to the functioning of institutions (Parliament, Supreme Court, political parties) and the everydayness of political processes. On the other hand, political theory is envisaged as a sophisticated mode of thinking about certain concepts (liberty, equality, justice, secularism) and intellectual traditions (liberalism, Marxism and so on). The dominance of Eurocentric Western concepts and categories is clearly visible in such disciplinary representation of political theory as a subject. Although a section of Indian scholars has questioned this imaginary dividing line between theory (read Western!) and politics (read Indian/ empirical!) in last two decades, the study of the theoretical aspects of Indian politics has not yet been given adequate intellectual attention.2 Sudipta Kaviraj’s work is an exception in this regard. He has been engaging with the complexities of Indian politics for serious political theorization for almost five decades. Kaviraj’s work recognizes the historical formation of Indian politics as a point of departure to underline the specific constitution of Indian modernity. Unlike other scholars of his generation, especially the self-declared Marxists, Kaviraj has always been critical of theoretical rigidity of any kind. This intellectual openness helps him to engage with Western intellectual traditions without compromising with his adherence to the empirically informed, historically conscious, and theoretically adventurous analysis of Indian politics. Kaviraj’s work introduces us to an interesting methodological trajectory. He does not outrightly reject the value of Eurocentric/Western theoretical thinking. Instead of employing them uncritically, he asks us to locate these theoretical reflections in their immediate Western context. This contextualization of Western theories, Kaviraj argues, may help us in tracing the manner in which a particular modern experience is understood, evaluated and eventually theorized. In other words, Kaviraj is not merely interested in the act of theory; he seems to explore the mechanisms that produce theoretical reflections. Notes on Methods","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47861590","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Of Caste and Indian Politics: A Detour Through D. L. Sheth and Beyond","authors":"Sasheej Hegde","doi":"10.1177/23210230211042993","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211042993","url":null,"abstract":"Stemming essentially from D. L. Sheth and the work embodied in his 1999 essay ‘Secularisation of Caste and Making of New Middle Class’, the article attempts to outline the pathways for an alternative engagement with caste and politics. In perspective is what is termed the ‘triumphalist’ mode of encountering caste identities; and, along this course, the extant possibilities of the constructivist understanding of caste are addressed. The stakes of the exercise are largely theoretical and conceptual, although a further thought is thrown in about the contemporary ground of caste politics in India as well.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46055511","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"What Do Preambles Do? A Study of Constitutional Intent and Reality","authors":"Neha Ummareddy, Aniket Alam","doi":"10.1177/23210230211042990","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211042990","url":null,"abstract":"‘We, the people’ is the most popular phrase from the constitutions. In spite of the fact that the number of countries including preamble as part of their constitution has been on the rise, preambles have received scant attention in academia. The importance of preambles has been established in multiple studies yet preambles have been looked at in isolation from socio-economic-environmental contexts. Our article attempts to present a unique insight by correlating preambles with the socio-economic-environmental and infrastructural context within which they exist. It explores whether these correlations exist and if they do with which features and to what extent and the possibility of a causal link. We pursue a statistical study between various indicators that reflect the growth of a country and the presence or absence of various elements in preambles across the world. Our study finds that correlations exist between the economic-social-environmental and infrastructural context of a nation-state and different elements in their preambles. Our study rigorously engages with patterns in development indicators across years to provide correlational insights into the role of preambles not just as a dormant reference but as active fragments of the socio-political-economic reality of a nation-state. We hope our article establishes grounds for a further study of the manner in which preambles and the non-political aspects of a nation-state can engage with each other.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46980440","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bringing Back the Absent: Some Reflections","authors":"Chaitra Redkar","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043611","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043611","url":null,"abstract":"Does the social background of a learner affect the learning process? If so, how can instructional design be sensitive to the sociology of a learner? What would be the starting point for introducing abstract ideas for those to whom both the experience and the language that constructs the idea are alien? What would be the takeaway for those students whose social location has recurringly denied them the time to pursue career in the area in which they are trained? What could be done to make learning more reflexive and take it beyond the reproduction of the jargon of the discipline? These are some of the questions that have accompanied me ever since I started teaching political theory and political thought, some 20 years ago. These questions emerged while observing a variety of learning environments. Classrooms in metropolitan cities are diverse in terms of language, linguistic skills, social background, financial capabilities and number of other ways. In smaller cities, classes are comparatively homogeneous in terms of language but other kind of diversities and hierarchies do exist. Engaging with a diverse classroom creates issues not merely pertaining to the medium of instruction but also for creating a frame of reference that makes sense to everyone. Different social locations come with varied political ethos and they also imply diverse learning environments available to the learner. These locations to a large extent define the facilities available for students’ schooling, to develop their language skills, to the time they are allowed to claim every day and in life as their own and number of such factors that may play crucial role in the teaching and learning process. Bringing together different temporalities and spatiality in one common frame becomes a big challenge for the instructor. Paradoxically, neither the learner nor the instructor is necessarily aware of the ethos of the varied location. To teach meta-political narratives to someone who is ignorant of the politics of her location by someone who is equally indifferent to her location as an instructor is not just paradoxical but is also self-defeating. It leaves a learner under an impression that politics lies somewhere else, far away from her own environment. Sadly, training of a professional political scientist doesn’t necessarily require interrogating the politics that shapes a particular learning or teaching environment. The thrust is on transmitting the jargon. What is acceptable is familiarizing oneself with what the celebrated scholarship produced. Learner thereby engages herself in only reproducing the ‘norm’ even while she tries to achieve the higher learning objectives identified in Bloom’s taxonomy (Bloom et al., 1956). The evaluative, analytical and creative abilities of the learner if unleashed, remain shaped in a particular paradigmatic framework that has percolated in her learning environment. Any contribution in order to be significant has to confirm this framework, else is d","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45395363","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Bypassing the Patronage Trap: Evidence from Delhi Assembly Election 2020","authors":"A. Barthwal, Asim Ali","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043081","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043081","url":null,"abstract":"Scholars have long theorized on the limits of patronage politics and the possibility of counter-mobilization it produces against clientelist strategies. Analysing the recent win of the Aam Aadmi Party in the 2020 Assembly election in Delhi, this article shows that programmatic policies of welfare can help parties to circumvent this trap and avoid targeted patronage networks. We find that this broad-based appeal increases the social base of the party to even include those segments of voters who remain aloof to patronage-based exchanges. Additionally, we test the salience of majoritarian issues in the presence of universal welfare. We find that by locating themselves on issue positions of relative advantage, and reducing the ideological distance with their chief competitor, a policy-focussed party may capture not just ideology-agnostic, but also peripheral voters who might be opposed to the other challenger. Using a logistic regression model, we find that policy concerns catapulted AAP to victory, while its ideological distance from the BJP added to this. Our analysis has significance for understanding the underlying changes to patronage-based linkages, especially in the presence of heightened ethnic appeals that increasingly characterizes electoral contexts in the country.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46907041","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Behind the Popular Narrative: Negotiating Life and Political Engagement in Conflicted Kashmir","authors":"Wahid Ahmad Dar","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043076","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043076","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on the subaltern system of micro appropriations or Jugaads used by young Kashmiris to survive within precarious situations inflicted due to armed conflict. More particularly, it argues that such Jugaads are invoked by the subaltern consciousness of Tehreeq-e-Azadi, which offers space for not just the negotiation with the state but also the creative improvisation of daily political actions. It is illustrated that young people’s political participation is entangled with the attempts to overcome the uncertainty around their lives, thereby offering them pragmatic solutions in advancing their interests. It is further elaborated that the existing polarization between separatism and mainstream is obscure at the experiential level, living within precarious situations has taught young people to silently craft possibilities of a good life without looking confrontational to either side. The article argues that localized forms of engagement are crucial for a comprehensive understanding of how modern states operate.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47598806","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"The Double Life of Dissent: Art, Politics and the Predicaments of Democracy in India","authors":"Malvika Maheshwari","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043019","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043019","url":null,"abstract":"The article focuses on two moments in India’s political history, in which out-rightly expressed dissent underlines analytical shifts in the nature and course of the country’s democracy. It asks two questions: First, what does a self-proclaimed, democratic state do with peaceful dissenting artists? The second question follows from this. If indeed the state stigmatizes and suppresses that dissent, what does the artist do? By foregrounding the relationship between the dissent and offence-taking, the article shows the increasingly complex changes in the nature of the democratic state, role of the art market therein, the dynamic patterns of dissent itself, which underline the cyclic outbursts of violence against artists.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42238431","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Governance and Democracy in Jammu and Kashmir: Measuring Public Trust in Formal Institutions","authors":"A. Wani, Muzamil Yaqoob","doi":"10.1177/23210230211043080","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1177/23210230211043080","url":null,"abstract":"The common association of political trust, legitimacy and participation within democratic states has engaged scholars to answer questions like: what are the bases of trusting the state and its institutions? And how enculturing trust can strengthen democratic governance? In this direction, institutional trust, which is invariably linked to political legitimacy, is critical to measure the health of governance. This article reflects upon the state-centric approach to governance, by exploring the interplay of institutional trust and public legitimacy in Jammu and Kashmir. The study of the state of institutional trust, as reflected in the post-2002 empirical data, enriches the theoretical discourse on governance in a conflict region.","PeriodicalId":42918,"journal":{"name":"Studies in Indian Politics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49208513","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}