South Asian Politics Research Articles

Temporary Displaced Persons (TDPS) from North Waziristan Agency (NWA) in Bannu: Problems and Prospects

Since its inception, Pakistan has always remained an important player in the South Asian politics due to its geographical location and strategic position. The war against terror affected the whole world generally and South Asia particularly. After the 9/11 attacks, the United States came into Afghanistan along with allied forces which pushed militants from Afghanistan to take refuge in near by places. Due to close proximity and vulnerable borders, many of these militants entered Pakistan's Federally Administered Tribal Areas, which resulted in a huge growth of militancy and extremism in the whole region.On the other side due to close collaboration with the United States in the war against terror, Pakistan suffered more in terms of lives, infrastructure, and the economy as compared to the forces combating terrorism in Afghanistan. This influx of militancy and extremism drove Pakistan to take measures against the advancement of militancy. Forceful strikes from Pakistan security forces on one side shook the structure of militants but on the other side resulted in a huge number of displacement. In the recent wave of displacement from the North Waziristan Agency, people suffered a lot, but later on, the Pakistani government, with the help of the local population and humanitarian agencies, overcome their difficulties and still trying to facilitate and rehabilitate them as soon as their areas became clear of the menace.

Modern Sufis and the State: The Politics in South Asia and Beyond. Edited by Katherine Pratt Ewing and Rosemary R. Corbett

Modern Sufis and the State: The Politics in South Asia and Beyond. Edited by Katherine Pratt Ewing and Rosemary R. Corbett

CHINA PAKSTAN ECONOMIC CORRIDOR, REGIONAL ECONOMIC DEPENDENCY; IMPLICATION FOR REGIONAL PEACE AND STABILITY

The politics of the area have long been dominated by realist, nationalistic, weapons race, and security-focused South Asian politics, with limited room for liberalism and solutions to regional and domestic problems. However, because of its economic dependence and multilateralism, CPEC, as a component of BRI, provides a pathway for modernisation in the region. The growth and extension of CPEC may result in economic expansion, regional development, peace, and prosperity. Many people think that CPEC would just benefit Pakistan and China, but in reality, it will have a significant influence on the social, political, and economic landscapes of South Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Openness and inclusivity are necessary for CPEC to be a source of peace, prosperity, and a tool for conflict resolution.
 It is up against a lot of obstacles and adversaries. Nevertheless, it has the ability to accomplish its goals and build a stable, integrated community in the area. Instead of just countries, regions will reap its advantages. Economic interdependence, free commerce, mutual reconciliation, and cooperation will lead to peace and stability.
 As a result, it is anticipated that as the CPEC project continues to succeed in connecting Central Asia, a new era of regional peace and stability would usher in an improved climate for cooperation and conflict resolution.

From Afghan Pan-Islamism to Turkish Feminism

From Afghan Pan-Islamism to Turkish Feminism

Religion and Politics in South Asia

Religion and Politics in South Asia

Surveillance, Censure and Support: Gender Counting in South Asia

Gender counting has been a longstanding concern of South Asian politics. For the past several years, gender counting has taken on central importance in South Asia in a new register. In both Pakistan and India, as part of a larger discussion on transgender rights and welfare, the state has engaged in various efforts to count the number of transgender persons living within its borders. In this recent (trans)gender counting, we see not only progressive welfare ambitions, but also the resurgence of regressive attitudes and practices towards transgender individuals, the transgender community and kinship practices.

Balance of Power in South Asia: Concerning Russian Role

Russia's engagement in South Asia has been shaped by its strategic interests: its quest for warm water, the routes of its gas pipeline, and its policy for curtailing U.S. hegemony. It has always been a dominant actor of South Asian Politics. The international dynamics have changed Russian strategies at different intervals. Initially, it was inclined towards India; however, in the current scenario, it has recognized the significance of Pakistan for a peaceful political settlement in Afghanistan and linking the Euro Asian union with South Asia, the Indian Ocean, and beyond. The paper highlights the changes in Russian policies towards South Asia and its due role in the balance of power between Pakistan and India.Russian strategic interest in South Asia and its relationship with India and Pakistan are the sole factors responsible for Russian involvement in BOP between Pakistan and India.

Pakistan-India Rivalry: An Analytical Perspective of Balance of Power

Division of British India culminated into two new states of Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. However, both Pakistan and India remained hostile since their inception. Multiple factors are responsible for their rivalry, such as the disputed Kashmir, water issues, communal riots, and assets distribution, etc. This affected the South Asian politics and invited the major powers to play their political game by influencing Indian and Pakistan's positions. The paper analyzes the bilateral conflict of India and Pakistan, their techniques to maintain the balance of power, and the role of major powers. The study also examines the foreign policies of India and Pakistan and their due positions since independence. The theory of balance of power has been applied to this study to explore the various aspects and prerequisites of BOP. The paper relies on qualitative methods of research to describe the positions of India and Pakistan in their strategies of the balance of power.

Pandemic Politics in South Asia: Muslims and Democracy

In South Asia, entrenched social and political cleavages involving Muslims or particular groups of Muslims have shaped state efforts to address the global Covid-19 pandemic: Hindu nationalists blamed Muslims for introducing the virus to India; anti-Covid lockdowns extended severe constraints on civil liberties in Muslim-majority Kashmir; anti-state mullahs protested public-health restrictions in Pakistan; Taliban insurgents used the virus as a pretext to delegitimize Afghanistan’s elected government. If one pattern has prevailed across South Asia, however, it is a pattern pushing away from democratic forms of legitimacy: persistent and uneven applications of emergency power, in particular, have weakened the outlook for democracy.

A view from the Roof: Space and politics in South Asia

A view from the Roof: Space and politics in South Asia

Dalit Counterpublic and Social Space on Indian Campuses

This article discusses three different university campuses in India (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Osmania University, and the English and Foreign Languages University) and their political and social environments with a particular focus on Dalit student activism from March to June, 2013, and from January to March, 2014 when this ethnographic research was conducted. It questions what place Dalit student activism, constituting the ‘counterpublic’ (Fraser, 1990; Warner, 2002), occupied in these campuses; how Dalit student activists interacted with other student political groups; what characteristic features the Dalit student activism had on each campus. This article discusses the changing power relations in Indian universities and the role of ‘social space’ (Bourdieu, 2018) in negotiating social statuses. Dalit student activists actively engaged in appropriating social space by installing Dalit symbolic icons on the university campuses, bringing up caste issues to public attention and thus temporarily turning certain campuses into ‘political strongholds’ (Jaoul, 2012) of the Dalit movement. Contributing to the recent scholarship on student politics in South Asia this article argues for the understanding of interactive relation between campus space and student politics, showing how Dalit students changed the campus space through symbolic appropriation and, conversely, how historically constituted campus spaces affected the nature of Dalit student activism in each of the discussed localities.

Pandemic politics in South Asia: Muslims and democracy

Pandemic politics in South Asia: Muslims and democracy

Indo-Caribbean diaspora, foreign policy, and iterations of Hindu identity

ABSTRACT This article examines the Indo-Caribbean diaspora's performance of vernacular representations of Hinduism and ethnic identity, as influenced by a global pan-Hindu agenda of India's current nationalist government. Using the case of Guyana, we consider dynamics between religion and South Asian politics by which agents disseminate pan-Hinduism, and how such avatars of Hindu performativity are affected by historical ethno-racial tensions. We contend that while the diaspora needs their ‘homeland’ to sustain their memories and heritage in their resettled state, the ‘homeland’ in turn can manipulate diasporic needs for migrant identity to advance its own foreign-policy agendas.

SHARI‘A AND THE STATE IN PAKISTAN: BLASPHEMY POLITICS. By FarhatHaq. Routledge Studies in South Asian Politics. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019. Pp. x + 204. Hd. $155.

Religious Studies ReviewVolume 46, Issue 2 p. 243-244 Short Reviews of Recent Publications: Islam SHARI‘A AND THE STATE IN PAKISTAN: BLASPHEMY POLITICS. By Farhat Haq. Routledge Studies in South Asian Politics. Abingdon, Oxon and New York: Routledge, 2019. Pp. x + 204. Hd. $155. First published: 03 July 2020 https://doi.org/10.1111/rsr.14635Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume46, Issue2June 2020Pages 243-244 RelatedInformation

How to Be Visible in Student Politics: Performativity and the Digital Public Space in Bangladesh

In Bangladeshi student politics, political performances in public spaces play an essential role in establishing patronage relationships and determining local authority structures. As Thomas Blom Hansen has famously argued, “visibility means everything” in such a context. With the emergence of social networking sites like Facebook, new digital public spaces have appeared. Focusing on ruling-party student activists at Rajshahi University, this article examines how student politicians in Bangladesh utilize Facebook to become visible in their everyday politicking. It shows how longstanding performative repertoires in the nondigital public space have gained a new salience through performances in the digital public space. It is those digital spaces that allow the performer to rearticulate even mundane everyday events as political performances. As these new digital public spaces impact the politics of visibility, it is crucial to integrate them in our efforts to understand local politics in South Asia and beyond.

Xenophobia: Consequential Impacts on South Asian Politics

Xenophobia: Consequential Impacts on South Asian Politics

CPEC and Regional Integration

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is an emerging debate. This project called a game-changer for Pakistan-China and for whole region. The main argument based on the phenomena of economic interdependence established peace and integration in the region. The new world order revolves around economic power rather than nuclear power. The economic strength is playing a significant role in regional integration and peace. The CPEC project based on both economic and strategic aspects. This project deals the growing economic interdependence and the phenomena of power politics in South Asia. The CPEC is important part of Chinas Marshall plan OBOR and providing a win-win situation for all states of region. This study contributes that how growing economic interdependence through CPEC established peace and integration for whole region. This study based on field survey and discourse analysis.

Russia, United States and China in South Asian Politics: Implications for Pakistan

End of the Cold War caused a paradigm shift in world politics by converting the bipolar world into a unipolar world with the emergence of the USA as a sole superpower in the field of international politics. Indo-US obnoxious nexus has put the security situation in perils in South Asia. America is in a full endeavor to contain China to halt her everexpanding sphere of influence. Positive and proactive development in PakRussia relations, in the post-Cold War period, has caused ripples in the stagnant waters of political, economic and strategic areas of mutual interest. On the global level Sino-US rivalry in Indian Ocean Region (IOR). While, on the other hand, so far as a regional factor is concerned, Pakistan and China have evolved very cordial and cooperative relations in order to complete China's Belt and Road (BRI) and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). Pak-Russia relations would go on to enter, from both sides, into complete trust, confidence-building and mutual reliance on each other.

Bovine Politics in South Asia: Rethinking Religion, Law and Ethics

This introduction outlines how the essays in this special section contribute to scholarship on cow protection in India. It argues that they disrupt three powerful framing binaries—religion/economy, legality/illegality and cow-lover/cow-killer—that have tended to dominate the literature on cow protection. Making tangible the analytical limits of these categories, the essays find new critical leverage in the everyday situated relationships between humans, bovines and the state. The essays are distinguished by their attention to bovines as creative and productive forces that are not mere symbols for human politics, but materially embodied and agentive beings that play a significant role in shaping the social and political worlds which emerge around them.

Attitudes Towards Women’s Participation in Local Politics in South Asia

Despite men’s traditional dominance in politics, survey data from selected geographical areas in India, Nepal and Bhutan show that attitudes towards women’s participation in local politics are overwhelmingly positive. Attitudes cluster along three major dimensions: perceptions of women’s capacities to join politics, the consequences of political engagement for the family’s reputation, and consequences of women’s political participation for their domestic responsibilities. Households with high economic status and political leaders are more positive whilst education, organisational membership, and living in urban areas do not show a consistent effect across the three dimensions, so we do not find a ‘modernity effect’. Despite variations in where and how women participate and in socio-economic and cultural contexts, attitudes are consistently positive, indicating that explanations for attitudinal changes are varied and complex. Nepal’s high score may be due to the political, social and military mobilisation in the last generation, while it is likely that reservation in India and women’s relative equality in Bhutan have contributed towards positive attitudes. Data are drawn from a survey of 6647 local level politicians, civil society leaders and ordinary citizens, and from interviews.