Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal
Continuing its Handbook series Routledge have brought out the Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics – India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal edited by renowned India expert Paul R. Brass. This collection has twenty-seven chapters divided into seven sections covering: i) political history from independence ii) structure of the state and political parties iii) legal issues iv) language politics v) internal threats to national unity vi) political economy and finally a (vii) comparative section. There is also a very valuable and informative introduction from Brass the gives the thematic focus of the volume. The Handbook includes a good glossary and extensive bibliography at the end though unusually for an area study there are no maps that would have been beneficial for the general reader.
This book has plenty of material for the student and scholar of South Asian Politics. All the chapters have been pitched to broad, but interested readership and provide a helpful guide to those new to the area including clear headlines and ending with a list of further reading for greater detail. The first two sections are particularly good in giving a swift, but substantive introductions to South Asian political history. Talbot (India and Pakistan) and Wickramasinghe (Sri Lanka) do a particularly skilful job at explaining the complex stories of those countries. Both examine the critical importance of colonial rule to the post-independent polity. Talbot gives a highly adept portrait of how quickly Pakistan and India took different trajectories and examines the movements and inheritances that made both countries. Wickramasinghe convincingly shows colonial continuities in Sri Lanka. Though the island lacked the bloodshed of its larger neighbours at independence it also lacked a ‘founding myth’ and though not appreciated amidst prosperity and peace the seeds had been sown in this democratically nascent era for the ethnic violence that would follow due to the false confidences of the anglophile inter-communal elite leadership and the British.
Readers must wait for chapters 7 and 10 in section two for a less historic, but still important account of Bangladesh and Nepal’s political developments since independence. (Hachhethu and Gellner’s Chapter 10 on Nepal also has a brief comparative section with Bhutan). Though it would have been worthwhile to provide a greater coverage to how East Pakistan became Bangladesh Blair gives a through overview of the post 1971 era. Hachheethu and Gellner give a fascinating account Nepalese politics especially surrounding the failures of the Monarchy and the rise of Maoists. The same section contains a critical and comprehensive analysis by DeVotta of the political structure of Sri Lanka and its vortex of ‘ethnic outbidding’ that has intensified under Mahinda Rajapaksa being ‘the first president to subscribe wholeheartedly to the Sinhalese Buddhist nationalist ideology’. Harris, Van Dyke and the Rudolphs look at the institutions, party machinery and systems at the federal and state levels in India – all are especially strong on regional politics, while Burki examines the links between the economy and politics in Pakistan with the failure to develop robust democratic institutions and the radicalisation of religion.
In the third section on the judiciary Shanka looks at the powers of the Indian Supreme Court since Indira Gandhi’s Emergency in 1975 and asks whether India’s bench is straying more and more beyond its branch and encroaching upon the Executive. However, the activism of the courts in defending social and environmental rights also brings the issue of access to justice with ever growing case loads and inability to make policy. Pakistan and Bangladesh’s courts have even more than their Indian counterparts been unafraid to meddle in politics, not necessarily with success. In Bangladesh’s case the active involvement of judicial officers as acting presidents during transitions after general elections is evidence of their critical role in politics. Rather differently from the other states Sri Lanka’s judiciary have been less assertive against the wishes of the Executive by failing to advance minority claims of discrimination in terms of faith, language and ethnicity having a ‘blindness to assertions of discrimination’ as well as defending individual rights.
Unaccountably in the language and pluralism section there is no chapter on Sri Lanka despite the “Sinhalese Only Act 1956” being the catalyst for the ethnic conflict (though DeVotta discusses this in the previous section. His book Blowback is an excellent account of linguistic nationalism and politics in Sri Lanka[1]). Unfortunately there are no chapters either on Nepal and Bangladesh – though both nations have less noticeable minorities than the other countries in this volume some information on Bangladesh’s Urdu speaking Biharis or Nepal’s variety of historic dialects and languages could have been useful for example. Rahman provides a very goof overview of the issues and academic literature surrounding Pakistan language issues, also examining language’s power of identity and instruction. The language chapter on India is very useful in identifying the multiple themes and tensions in multilingual India. However, more attention should have been given to how important language is to the territorial and regional organisation of the Indian Union such as the States Reorganisation Act 1956, which allowed India to maintain unity, but simultaneously gave the different linguistic groups the opportunity as states to have a measure of devolution containing most secessionist instincts.[2]
Churchill contemptuously said that ‘India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator’. The fifth section looks at how South Asia has dealt with its borders and the potential nations that lie within them with many of its citizens denying the legitimacy of the centre. Here there is a chapter by Singh on India’s principal threats to unity in the Punjab, Kashmir and Northeastern states like Nagaland and Mizoram. Wilkinson instead looks at the enduring cleavages of caste and communalism in India and touches on the radicalisation the Hindu nationalists. Waseem and Uyangoda look at ethnic violence in Pakistan and Sri Lanka respectively and convincingly show the ratcheting-up of inter-communal conflict by governments with short-term horizons and patronage based policies on one side and hardened and ruthless groups from minorities bent on civic disruption to say the least on the other. Again chapters on Bangladesh and Nepal’s far from stable internal politics would have added to this South Asian wide section.
The political economy of the South Asian states is discussed in the penultimate section with impressive chapters on India from development and agrarian angles. Corbridge’s account of the glaring economic inequities in India is particularly useful covering the recent economic prosperity of some Indians, but placing this within the broader performance of the Indian economy and its impact on the overwhelming majority of citizens who remain depressingly poor. Lakshman outlines the economic history of independent Sri Lanka up to the 1980s, but neglects almost entirely the critical impact and huge cost of defence expenditure and fighting a civil war against the Tamil Tigers on the Sri Lankan economy, which has been the dominating factor of the economy since at least 1983.
The final section gives some comparisons on Militaries, Corruption, Political Movements and International Politics in South Asia. Cohen rightly brings to the reader’s attention that South Asia contains ‘some of the largest and most important military’ in the world with India and Pakistan having the second and sixth largest armies respectively on the globe. Importantly Cohen also looks at the civilian control of the army in India and opposite fact in Pakistan as well as the non-state forces like the LTTE in Sri Lanka – this point is also highlighted in the Political Movement chapter. Kochanek’s chapter is fascinating charting the power of corruption and infiltration across the region while Hewitt places South Asian politics on an international perspective. A comparative assessment on how democracy has fared would have boosted the worth of this section, especially using the valuable survey data that came from the State of Democracy Report.[3] Though the book is clear on what countries it covers something on the smaller states, where literature is less available, such as Bhutan and the Maldives, could have been addressed. Coverage of them could have been included in a chapter on the region’s neighbours, especially given China’s growing interest and Afghanistan’s security impact on the region as well as Burma and Iran.
The volume will be very useful as an introduction to students and scholars alike on South Asian politics. Though there are gaps in coverage and issues neglected there is still enough information to stimulate the reader’s interest and guide future reading.
Harshan Kumarasingham, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London. Harshan’s book ‘A Political Legacy of the British Empire: Power and the Parliamentary System in Post-Colonial India and Sri Lanka’ will be published in October 2012.
[1] Neil DeVotta, Blowback – Linguistic Nationalism, Institutional Decay, and Ethnic Conflict in Sri Lanka, Stanford: Sanford University Press, 2004
[2] For this issue and others in nation building in India and beyond see Alfred Stepan, Juan J. Linz and Yogendra Yadav, Crafting State-Nations – India and other Multinational Democracies, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011
[3] The State of Democracy in South Asia: A Report, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008