India ReviewPub Date : 2022-05-27DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2086409
Fahmidul Haq
{"title":"Cinema of Bangladesh: Absence of 1947 and abundance of 1971","authors":"Fahmidul Haq","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2086409","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2086409","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Bangladesh got liberated from Pakistan through a bloody war in 1971. But the country was also a victim of 1947 Partition of India. The Partition not only split India also divided Bengal and Punjab. The East Bengal with Muslim majority got a new name East Pakistan. However, the country Pakistan with two wings with 1200 miles of Indian territory in between, could not stick together for long. In the memory of Bangladeshi people 1971 is relatively fresh and in the contemporary Bangladeshi politics 1971 still matters. The winding political trajectory of Bangladesh has influenced the discourses of cinema – making less films on 1947 Partition and more films on 1971 Liberation War. Different art forms have portrayed both 1947 and 1971 – the two historical incidents that heavily shaped the political and cultural nature of Bangladesh. This article will investigate why there is scarcity of 1947 films and abundance of 1971 films in Bangladesh. The article will also scrutinize how dominant historiography engulf the body of the films and discard alternative historiography. In examining these queries, the method would be a historical account of film production and its content and a few cases would be studied to get the picture in depth.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"419 - 437"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-05-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43314403","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080489
A. Benvenuti
{"title":"Nehru’s Bandung moment: India and the convening of the 1955 Asian-African conference","authors":"A. Benvenuti","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080489","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080489","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article explores Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in convening the 1955 Bandung Conference. Drawing upon previously embargoed Indian and Western government records, it sheds light on a largely overlooked aspect of Nehru’s Cold War diplomacy. By doing so, it shows that Nehru did not attach, at least initially, much importance to Indonesia’s calls for an Asian-African conference. Only in late 1954 did he show more interest in the Indonesian proposal. Three factors pushed Nehru in this direction: his reluctance to embarrass Indonesia, his concerns about American regional policy and his desire to exploit China’s support for peaceful coexistence. Confronted with renewed regional tensions but able to capitalize on Beijing’s new-found reasonableness, Nehru threw India’s diplomatic weight behind Indonesia’s proposal with the view to furthering his vision of “areas of peace.” Nehru’s “Bandung moment,” however, was short-lived. Although the Bandung Conference appeared to have advanced India’s national interests in the short term, its benefits were more questionable in the long run. In the end, India was unable to tie China down to its regional vision and protect itself against Chinese belligerence. Faced with a mounting Chinese challenge, Nehru’s strategy, centered upon nonaligned peaceful coexistence, manifested all its limitations.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"153 - 180"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41647289","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080485
D. Mitra
{"title":"The changing nature of dominant castes: a case study of caste-based identity construction in Varanasi","authors":"D. Mitra","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080485","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080485","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The idea of “dominant caste” has been important in the discourse of caste that saw the movement from social intercourse (hierarchy, purity-pollution) to political mediation (representation, demand for positive discrimination) in various literature. This paper offers a longitudinal study of caste relations in and around Varanasi in North India, focusing on the Brahmin caste vis-à-vis another dominant caste (non-Brahmin). It combines historical material with individual-level data set, the findings of which are presented as a case study. The essay’s objectives are as follows (a) description and analysis of two different “dominant” castes to understand the functioning of the caste identity in contemporary India. This is done to reevaluate how the castes have sought to convert their historically accrued caste capital into social or political capital; (b) the relationship between the two “dominant” castes. It was found that dominance was regionally located in both cases, but in the colonial period, it depended on caste hierarchy, unlike in post-colonial/modern days. This recreated a sort of discrimination manipulated by the dominant castes at their respective levels.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"129 - 152"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49435592","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080486
Aditi Malik, M. Prasad
{"title":"Peace by committee: state, society, and the control of communal violence in Bhagalpur, Bihar","authors":"Aditi Malik, M. Prasad","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080486","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080486","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Why do communal provocations generate violence in some moments but not in others? Drawing on 52 interviews and archival and ethnographic evidence from Bhagalpur, Bihar, we develop a theoretical framework to explain how communal conflict might be controlled. In Bhagalpur, we find that a state-society partnership has helped the city to avoid active violence since 1989. Civil society elites gain and maintain local followings by drawing on their access to the state to resolve quotidian problems for their constituents. Doing so cements their status in their communities and imbues them with the credibility to calm communal tensions. These findings illuminate the governance strategies through which state actors might delegate the performance of important state functions, such as maintaining order, to non-state groups. They also reveal a range of tactics through which state-society partnerships might thwart communal conflict in divided societies like India.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"181 - 215"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49084301","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080488
Aniruddha Saha
{"title":"Addressing the norms gap in international security through the India-US nuclear relationship","authors":"Aniruddha Saha","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080488","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080488","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT While scholars (mainly from the Global North) in International Relations have been turning to a (critical) constructivist agenda in norms research, the field has increasingly become devoid of applying this area of research in understanding the nuclear behavior of deviant states from the Global South. The paper therefore attempts to bridge this research gap by using the case of the India-US nuclear relationship. To do so, the paper: i) identifies the probable convergences of the existing literature on nuclear policy and the research on constructivist norms, ii) highlights India’s racial treatment as a Southern nuclear state in academia and policy discourse, and iii) recognizes plausible avenues for the expansion of the Western dominated normative research agenda by analyzing India’s nuclear relationship with the US ― with a specific focus to norm contestation and normative change. In bringing together (critical) constructivists and scholars in nuclear politics to further our understanding of how we perceive security of non-western states, this work makes an epistemological and ontological contribution in the field of international security studies.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"216 - 248"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42368944","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2022.2080487
A. Phadnis, A. Khandelwal
{"title":"The rise of political consultancy in India","authors":"A. Phadnis, A. Khandelwal","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2022.2080487","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2022.2080487","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Around the world, the practice of politics has taken a turn toward “professionalisation.” A key political actor that is facilitating this change is the political consultant. However, despite the influential role that consultants play in contemporary politics, they have been subject to little scholarly attention. We introduce a study on political consultants for the context of India, a large middle-aged democracy that has seen a growing presence of consultants over the last two decades. The study investigates four main questions: (a) What factors have fueled the growth of political consultancy? (b) What are the characteristics of the industry, such as the number and types of firms and types of clientele? (c) What are the range of services that consultants provide to political clients? (d) How have political consultants grown and evolved over time in the Indian context? The data for the study come from a combination of primary sources such as interviews with political consultants, and secondary sources such as media and industry reports, and personal accounts published by consultants. The study concludes with a forecast of the future of political consultancy in India, and identifies the pain points that are likely to stifle its growth potential.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"249 - 276"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43281507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2021.2018200
Rochana Bajpai, Lawrence Sáez
{"title":"Winning big: The political logic of winning elections with large margins in India","authors":"Rochana Bajpai, Lawrence Sáez","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.2018200","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.2018200","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Politicians winning elections with large margins of victory, beyond what is necessary to win electoral contests,what we term “winning big”, is a common, yet under-studied phenomenon across the world. Political economy models suggest that winning big is not an optimal allocation of scarce campaign resources in a SMP/FPTP electoral system. Inductive inquiry shows that incumbent politicians likely to win nevertheless campaign hard, often devoting considerable effort and resources, for reasons that remain unexamined. Focusing on India, this article explores a range of reasons that can help explain this phenomenon through an innovative research design that combines quantitative analysis with in-depth elite interviews with incumbent MPs from 10 states. We distinguish the phenomenon of “winning big” from that of “safe” seats,identify and probe factors that can contribute to large margins, including candidate strategy, party popularity, mobilizers, electoral uncertainty, and party control . Our findings suggest that while political parties in India, as elsewhere, do not spend more money on electoral contests that they likely to win comfortably, winning big can be the result, among other factors, of a party strategy to establish a reputation for invincibility, and/or individual efforts, stemming from a sense of political vulnerability felt by politicians, underestimated in the literature on safe seats.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"21 - 52"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43051465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2021.2018202
Ashwath Komath
{"title":"The Kashmir Litmus test: an examination of international Islamic solidarity and co-operation","authors":"Ashwath Komath","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.2018202","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.2018202","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article looks into international cooperation based on shared religious solidarity; its causative factors, and how it influences relations between states. To demonstrate its effects in actual practice, this article examines the case study of the decision of the Indian government to revoke the special status of Kashmir in 2019, which prompted criticism by a few states, specifically Turkey and Malaysia, and also examines the role of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The article engages with the reasons for these states to engage in criticism of the Indian government’s decision and explores the influence of religious solidarity, especially Islamic solidarity in their rebukes against India, and also briefly deals with the implications such moves may have on a state’s foreign policy calculus.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"53 - 76"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42347728","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2021.2018203
K. Anand, Marie Lall
{"title":"The debate between secularism and Hindu nationalism – how India’s textbooks have become the government’s medium for political communication","authors":"K. Anand, Marie Lall","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.2018203","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.2018203","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT Schools and textbooks are significant mediums for the transmission of political ideas. Textbooks therefore reflect the ideology of the day whilst imparting values, goals, and myths to younger generations. This article provides an insight into the nexus between politics, the state, the social contract, and school textbooks in India. It critically highlights the ways in which the discourses of political parties of the (national) Self and Other are invoked and reflected in school textbooks underpinning the parties’ versions of national identity and transmit their wider political messages, with devastating results on the debates about Indian citizenship. There is a clear link between changing political parties at the helm of national and state governments and which school textbooks are in use. The article reviews the textbook politics between 1998 and 2020, focusing in particular on how the present BJP-led government has appointed Hindutva-minded scholars to lead education institutions underpinning the message of India being a Hindu nation. The right wing RSS has been allowed by the Narendra Modi government to influence the formulation of the National Education Policy 2020 as well as suggesting changes to textbooks to push the national discourse of citizenship defined by Hindutva at the Union and State levels. The article adds, theoretically and substantively, to the specific link between education and the current issues of Indian citizenship as the government tries to change the values of India’s constitution. Not many in this generation of Indians think this is abnormal, as this reflects what they have learnt at school and historically been used to shape the hostile mind-set of new generations vis-à-vis their neighbors, and other religious communities. The article evaluates how over the last two decades textbooks of the National Council for Education Research and Training (NCERT) interpret government policy objectives and guidelines to depict Indian national identity, internal ethnic and cultural diversity, and citizenship.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"246 ","pages":"77 - 107"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41284829","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
India ReviewPub Date : 2022-01-01DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2021.2018201
Ilyas Chattha
{"title":"Communalized force: the 1947 partition violence in Punjab and role of law enforcers","authors":"Ilyas Chattha","doi":"10.1080/14736489.2021.2018201","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2021.2018201","url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT The communalization of the police, which resulted from the embittered political situation among the rival communities, was a prominent feature of the Partition violence in 1947. Instead of safeguarding minority communities under attack, the police largely condoned and contributed to the violence, not because of sympathies with their coreligionists, but because they could act with impunity in an environment of insubordination and administrative breakdown in the process of the transition of power of the outgoing British colonial state. This article will show that the absence of a restraining authority, impunity from the law at the point of transitional state-created conditions of violence and the participation of law enforcement agencies led to the widespread violence. This documentation is done by accessing previously unexplored police First Information Reports (FIRs) lodged at local police stations at the time, and the reports of the Punjab Special Branch Intelligence Police from the Roberts Club Archives (RCA), Lahore. The analysis not only contributes to recent scholarship that focuses on the ‘new history’ of Partition studies but also provides an intriguing insight into the role of law enforcement agencies in mass violence.","PeriodicalId":56338,"journal":{"name":"India Review","volume":"21 1","pages":"1 - 20"},"PeriodicalIF":0.8,"publicationDate":"2022-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45404493","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}