Ethnic Conflicts in South Asia

Abstract

This article is an attempt to employ the constructivism of Alexander Wendt to understand ethnic conflicts in South Asia. The article surveys the theoretical literature on constructivism to create a set of propositions regarding ethnic conflicts and attempts to test these propositions for several of South Asia's ethnic conflicts. The article argues that ethnic conflicts are essentially identity conflicts in which the definition or construction of threats, enemies and friends plays a pivotal role. Ethnic conflicts evolve according to how identities are defined, the definitions being predicated on the material condition facing the communities themselves in relation to the manifest practices of the state. In contrast to realist discourses that see only endless conflicts and an invariable security dilemma for groups, and liberalism that defines ethnic peace (or conflict) in terms of transaction costs and utility calculations, the constructivist reading of ethnicity enables International Relations to interrogate ethnicity in cultural-ideational terms. By using constructivist propositions to a select set of ethnic conflicts in South Asia, the article attempts to explain the salience of ethnicity as a pervasive mode of conflict in the subcontinent.