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Program
Perspectives on Contemporary India
16 – 17 April 2015
Museum of Ethnology, Steenstraat 1, Leiden
Organized by
Co‐sponsored by
www.iias.nl
AsianModernitiesandTraditions
VanSteedenFund
www.hum.leiden.edu/lias http://research.leiden.edu/ research‐profiles/amt/
www.luf.nl
PROGRAM
Thursday 16 April 2015 8.30 – 9.00 Registration and coffee 9.00 – 9.15 Inauguration H.E. Rajesh Nandan Prasad (Ambassador, Embassy of India, The Hague, the Netherlands) Words of Welcome Willem Vogelsang (Deputy Director, International Institute for Asian Studies, the Netherlands) Pralay Kanungo (ICCR Chair for the Study of Contemporary India at IIAS / Leiden University, the Netherlands) 9.15 – 10.45 Session I: Contesting Imaginations Chair: Dirk Kolff (Emeritus Professor of South Asian History, Leiden University, the Netherlands) Peter R. deSouza (Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi, India) Nehru’s Letters to Chief Ministers and Building the Imagination of the New State Swapan Dasgupta (Senior Journalist & Political Analyst, Delhi, India) Challenges to the Nehruvian Consensus in India 10.45 – 11.15 Coffee break 11.15 – 12.45 Session II: Majority‐Minority Questions Chair: Peter Bisschop (Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, the Netherlands) Meenakshi Jain (Delhi University, Delhi, India) Hindu History? An Examination of Some Issues in the Reconstruction of India’s Past Gurpreet Mahajan (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India) Pursuing 'Unity in Diversity': Reflections on the Minority Question in India 12.45 – 14.00 Lunch 14.00 – 15.30 Session III: Changing Identities Chair: Nira Wickramasinghe (Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, the Netherlands) Gopal Guru (Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India) Provincilization of Radical Politics in India James Manor (University of London, United Kingdom) As Caste Hierarchies Wane: Promoting an Accommodative, Reasonably Civilised Society amid Fundamental Change 15.30 – 16.00 Coffee break
16.00 – 17.30 Session IV: Party Politics Chair: Eric de Maaker (Leiden University Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, the Netherlands) Christophe Jaffrelot (CERI Paris, France / King’s College London, United Kingdom) The AamAadmi Party of Arvind Kejriwal: Gandhian Revival in the City? Sebastian Schwecke (Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany) Secularism’s Other: The BJP as a ‘Normal’ Political Party
Friday 17 April 2015
09.30 – 11.00 Session V: Economy & Development – I
Chair: Frank N. Pieke (Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, the Netherlands)
Rahul Mukherji (National University of Singapore) Ideas, Interests, and the Tipping Point: Economic Change in India Des Gasper (International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague of Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands) India Shining – Waiting for Human Development Still? 11.00 – 11.15 Coffee break
11.15 – 12.45 Session VI: Economy & Development – II
Chair: Yuehtsen Juliette Chung (IIAS Visiting Professor, Taiwanese Chair of Chinese Studies, the Netherlands)
Ashok Swain (Uppsala University, Sweden) When State Decides Not To Listen: The Emerging New Phase of Environmental Movements in India
Véronique Dupont (Institute of Research for Development (IRD) / Centre for Social Sciences Studies on Africa, America and Asia (CESSMA), France) The Challenge of ‘Human’ Sustainability for Indian Mega‐cities ‐ A Critical Appraisal of Slum Demolition and Slum Policies in Delhi 12.45 – 14.15 Lunch 14.15 – 15.45 Session VII: India and the World Chair: Pralay Kanungo (ICCR Chair for the Study of Contemporary India at IIAS / Leiden University, the Netherlands) Arun Kumar Sahu (Indian Council for Cultural Relations, India) India‐China Relations: Prospects for the Future John Zavos (University of Manchester, United Kingdom) Social Action and Cultures of Service in the BrAsian City 15.45 – 16.15 Concluding Remarks & Coffee
ABSTRACTS
Nehru's letters to Chief Ministers and building the imagination of the new state Peter Ronald deSouza Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, India Over sixteen and a half years, from 15 October 1947 to 21 December 1963, Nehru wrote nearly 378 letters to the Chief Ministers of the Indian States. These were published in five volumes and covered nearly 3000 pages. What was Nehru hoping to do when he wrote these letters, some of which were of considerable length, but most of which had a periodicity of a fortnight? Should they be seen as an example of a collaborative project of building a new nation from the embers of partition? Was it a forward looking management instrument to get leaders of the constituent units of the union to be on the same page and share an emerging imagination? Was it his method of public education? This paper will look at these letters and try and read them as an instrument of governance. It will extract from them some general themes of concern for the new government and it will reflect on Nehru’s vision, on, in some cases, the specific observations he makes, and on the moral political sensibilities that cause him to see some things as significant. Through such a reading one gets an understanding of Nehru’s project of building a post colonial democratic state in India. We could perhaps debate what has happened to that project today.
Challenges to the Nehruvian consensus in India Swapan Dasgupta Independent political analyst, New Delhi, India Jawaharlal Nehru’s contribution to the political culture in India endured after his death in 1964. He forged a broad consensus centred on the management of the economy (socialism), the conduct of foreign policy (non‐alignment) and strategies of national integration (secularism). The Indian National Congress, the premier political organisation of India until the late‐1980s, in turn, put these principles of statecraft into operation. This paper assesses the evolution of the Nehruvian order under his successors and the political challenges to it, culminating in the victory of Narendra Modi in the 2014 general election. It examines the nature of the ideological conflict and probes the departures from Nehru’s legacy India is likely to witness in the coming years. In particular, it will examine the extent to which the election of the BJP Government in Delhi marks a sharp rupture from consensus politics.
Hindu history? An examination of some issues in the reconstruction of India’s past Meenakshi Jain Gargi College, University of Delhi, India The term Hindu history does not enjoy particular credibility in academic circles. It is, perhaps rightly, perceived as too wanting in intellectual rigor to merit serious attention. Yet, it is equally indisputable that it has articulated some serious shortcomings in the dominant historical discourse. Broadly speaking, its areas of concern pertain to the Aryan invasion theory, Muslim rule in India, the nature of the freedom struggle, and more recently, the Ramjanmabhumi‐ Babri Masjid dispute. An encapsulation of some of these issues would help assess the validity or otherwise of
its position. On the Aryan invasion/ migration theory, on present reckoning, neither its proponents nor its opponents can claim a decisive edge. While proponents of Aryan invasion/ migration appear to have overly depended on philological‐linguistic evidence, its opponents have relied primarily on archeological data (which shows continuity of settlement). As things stand, only the decipherment of the Indus script will settle the issue one way or the other. So it could be premature to dismiss the no invasion theory as wholly unfounded. On Muslim rule in India, most current academic writing has highlighted the political and cultural synthesis that was purportedly achieved in this period. The approach has been to minimize, if not eliminate, areas of conflict and confrontation. The rupture between the two communities is attributed to British machinations in the colonial era. Opponents of this viewpoint allege that only a miniscule group, mostly restricted to the warrior Rajputs, was co‐opted. The cultural and religious policies of the rulers remained mostly discriminatory. A perceptible change occurred only in the eighteenth when Mughal power was in decline. The fact that no religious centre in north India pre‐dates that century surely tells a tale. Indeed, it is argued that throughout the period of Muslim rule, the liberal trend in Indian Islam remained weaker than the conservative one. These remain contentious issues, though there is evidence to suggest that a synthesis, if achieved, was an imperfect one. In recent years, the Ramjanmabhumi‐Babri Masjid dispute has, perhaps, evoked the most negative response among academics. But, it must also be noted that the debate was dominated by historians from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi University, and Aligarh Muslim University, with virtually no participation from other Indian universities. Also, the judgment of the Allahabad High Court, delivered on 30th September 2010, brought new facets of the dispute to the fore. Among the documents produced in Court during the proceedings were records of litigation in British courts dating from the year 1858. These clearly demonstrated that the conflict over Ayodhya pre‐dated the BJP‐VHP. Further, revenue records of the periods of the Awadh Nawabs and the British, as well as the list of Waqf properties published in the UP Gazette of 26th February 1944 showed that no Waqf land had ever been associated with Babri Masjid. But a mere listing of differences does not of itself authenticate a position. Implicit in the term Hindu is a monolithic religious entity. This is a debatable proposition, given the historic role of caste and regional identities in India. There is additionally the imperative to mediate conflicting perspectives, given the requirements of nation building in a complex and plural society. All in all, Hindu history could be viewed as an intent to rectify imperfections in the dominant narrative, and an attempt at community creation and consolidation. It could be perceived as a venture to construct a grand narrative of a community in the making.
Pursuing 'Unity in Diversity': Reflections on the Minority Question in India Gurpreet Mahajan Jawaharlal Nehru University, India India was among the first few democracies to recognize and accommodate cultural diversity. At a time when most liberal democracies assumed that granting equal and identical rights to all persons, as citizens, was the most appropriate way for ensuring equality, India focused on the minorities: their concerns and rights. Yet, paradoxically enough, cultural majoritarianism, on the one hand, and minority vulnerability, on the other, are two phenomena that have been present throughout post‐independence period. The paper reflects on this peculiarity and argues that respect for diversity (the institutional structures adopted) and the commitments made to minorities were embedded in a framework of, what might be called, benevolent majoritarianism. A form of identity politics was thus already present, the only difference being that the leadership
assumed that moral intuitions could be invoked, or put in place, and they would ensure a continued respect for diversity. Democratic politics however had space enough for other cultural narratives to exist, leading one to conclude that neither principles nor intuitions may be enough by themselves. They need to be backed by appropriate institutional practices; without the latter minorities may remain permanently vulnerable.
Provincilization of Radical Politics in India Gopal Guru Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi In the present paper, my main focus is to discuss the complex but mutually exclusive processes that involve compression and expansion of national politics. In the contemporary India, I further argue, what seems to be prominently unfolding is the expansion of one party rule at the centre and at the same time compression of radical politics both in time and space. The emergence of one party rule at the centre has to be understood in terms of the twin factors such as the ideology of development and the complimentary factor that is the politics of frustration and hope. The radical politics, on the other hand, seems to be complacent in terms of remaining relevant at the state or local level. It inn other words finds itself helpless in terms of exploiting the truth conditions that have been quite favourable to the former. The radical politics of the left and the dalit has found itself torn between the subsidized satisfaction of remain relevant at the local level at the same time losing on to the grand ambitions of becoming the all India party ready to capture on their own the political power at the centre. The purpose of the present paper , therefore, is to elaborate on and explain with data and other details the above hypothetical claims .
As Caste Hierarchies Wane: Promoting an Accommodative, Reasonably Civilised Society amid Fundamental Change James Manor University of London, United Kingdom Over the last 20 years, mounting evidence has shown that Dalits across much of rural India are increasingly refusing to accept caste hierarchies. This represents one of the two or three most important changes to occur in India since independence. This paper ‐‐ based on field work in numerous, diverse parts of India – is one part of a longer analysis of the implications of this change for village‐level power dynamics and caste interactions. As we might expect, these refusals have often heightened social tensions. But that analysis has found that while spasms of savage violence sometimes occur, the predominant trend has been the negotiation of grudging accommodations between so‐called ‘higher’ castes and Dalits. Based on these findings, this paper examines arguments by several eminent commentators on how, in a liberal democratic India, reasonably civilised social relations might best be fostered. It focuses on B.R. Ambedkar, M.K. Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and recent writings by Martha C. Nussbaum – in which she assesses those three figures and sets out her own views on how this goal might be pursued. This paper argues that the most promising approach is the use of laws and political processes not to change bad motivations into good (an impossible task), but to persuade people with malign intent that the costs of violent actions are too great.
The Aam Aadmi Party of Arvind Kejriwal: Gandhian revival in the city? Christophe Jaffrelot CERI Paris, France /King’s College London, United Kingdom AAP belongs to a long tradition of India’s politics that has been initiated by Mahatma Gandhi and continued by JP and others after independence. Its idealism recurrently found expression in anti‐corruption mobilisations and its anti‐state ideology translated into a promotion of decentralization of power at the local level. Kejriwal is trying to replicate in an urban context the democratic model that Gandhi had conceived for village India. This utopian project, rooted in an opposition repertoire, has mobilized urban voters in large numbers in Indian metropolis, including Delhi. This paper will try to analyse why has AAP been more successful in the city than elsewhere in India.
Secularism's Other: The BJP as a 'Normal' Political Party Sebastian Schwecke Centre for Modern Indian Studies, University of Göttingen, Germany Most of the studies on Hindu nationalism portray the BJP as the other of Indian secularism and interpret its rise as a threat to the ‘secular fabric' of the Indian state. Without getting into the merits of their arguments, this paper argues that such focused projection of Hindu nationalism as the antipode of secularism tends to obscure some of the BJP's main characteristics, and in particular, its distinct class character as well as social embedment in locality. As a result, studies on the BJP usually tend to acquire sensational overtone, alternating between the extremes of alarmist predictions of secular doom in times of relative strength and too‐early predictions of imminent decline as an ideological threat in times of relative weakness. In this context, this paper will focus on: (1) the distinct class character of the BJP as a political project; (2) the forms of local embedment of the Hindu nationalist movement, which affect politics at higher levels; and (3) the BJP in global and historical comparison, i.e. the commonalities and distinctions of the BJP with other political movements including Islamist and European corporatist/Christian Democrat movements.
Ideas, interests, and the tipping point: Economic change in India Rahul Mukherji National University of Singapore This paper makes the case for a “tipping‐point” model for understanding economic change in India. This gradual and largely endogenously driven path calls for the simultaneous consideration of ideas and politics. Exogenous shocks affected economic policy, but did not determine the course of economic history in India. India’s developmental model evolved out of new ideas Indian technocrats developed based on events they observed in India and other parts of the world. A historical case for the “tipping‐point” model is made by comparing two severe balance of payments crises India faced in 1966 and 1991. In 1966, when the weight of ideas and politics in India favored state‐led import substitution, Washington could not coerce New Delhi to accept deregulation and globalization. In 1991, on the other hand, when Indian technocrats’ ideas favoured deregulation and globalization, the executive‐technocratic team engineered a silent revolution in the policy paradigm. New Delhi engaged constructively with Washington, making a virtue of the necessity of IMF conditions, and implemented a home‐grown reform program that
laid the foundations for rapid economic growth in world’s most populous and tumultuous democracy.
India Shining – Waiting for Human Development still? Des Gasper International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague (Erasmus University Rotterdam), the Netherlands A fine set of papers some years back entitled ‘Illfare in India‐‐Essays on India’s Social Sector’ (Harriss‐White and Subramaniam 1999) reflected on India’s disappointing progress, in some cases even lack of progress, on many ‘social’ fronts in the fifty years after 1947. India, home of civilizations for five thousand years, home too to ample wealth and talent, housed the greatest concentration of human misery, wretchedness, suffering and wasted potential in the world. Compared to many other countries in Asia it had made weak progress to change illfare into welfare in half a century of independence. Its figures for human development compared unfavourably in several respects with those of much of Sub‐Saharan Africa (Gasper 2001). Despite ‘The Idea of India’ (Khilnani) a shared national project of citizenship and provision of its requisites had remained weak, as Ambedkar had predicted given a fragmented hierarchical society and social consciousness. In such a society, mass education (for example) implied empowerment of the rural poor, women and Dalits and received no priority from powers‐that‐be. At the same time the abstracted, aggregated, impersonal frameworks from economics that predominated in much official policy and planning helped to veil this, and led at most to regrets over a weak state rather than to critique of a strong and cruel one.
Since that time, India’s economic transformation has accelerated, and the associated pride has been given expression in slogans like “India Shining”, the BJP’s premature election banner of 2004. This paper will explore some diverse statements of emergent elite consciousnesses in India, the quantity and quality of attention that they give to issues of ‘human development’ and ‘social sectors’, and how far they mark a move ahead. The anticipated materials include technology‐inspired visions such as Abdul Kalam (2002), management‐inspired visions such as that of business guru C.K. Prahalad (Paramanand 2014), and combinations of the two such as by IT enterpreneur and state‐reformer Nandan Nilekani (2009). The paper will consider also the current wave of attention, pushed by new BJP Prime Minister Modi, to—at long last—basic sanitation, traditionally the blindest of blind spots in Indian development. Abdul Kalam, A.P.J., 2002: Ignited Minds: Unleashing the Power Within India. Viking. Gasper, Des, 2001. Waiting for Human Development: a review essay on Illfare in India, Review of Development and Change, VI (2), 295‐304. Harriss‐White, Barbara and S. Subramaniam (editors), 1999, Illfare in India – Essays on India’s Social Sector in Honour of S. Guhan, New Delhi: Sage Publications. Khilnani, Sunil, 1997. The Idea of India, London: Hamish Hamilton. Nilekani, Nandan, 2009. Imagining India – Ideas for the New Century. New Delhi: Penguin India. Paramanand, B., 2014. CK Prahalad – The Mind of the Futurist, Chennai: Westland Ltd. Tharoor, Shashi, 2003. Nehru: the Invention of India. New Delhi: Penguin India.
When State Decides Not To Listen: The Emerging New Phase of Environmental Movements in India Ashok Swain Department of Earth Sciences of Uppsala University, Sweden India has been successful in maintaining its democratic edifice since independence in spite of its multi‐ethnic, multi‐religious and multi‐linguistic society. This Indian wonder has been for some time however passing through a phase of ‘democratic churning’. A substantial number of Indian populations are increasingly resisting accepting an ‘exploitative’ state structure or a development model that they presume excludes them. The democratic awakening has led to the increased self‐assertion and political participation of these silent groups. As a part of these new organized protests in India, environmental movements have increased in frequency and intensity and has forced the state to rethink its path of development in the last decade. However, the newly elected Right‐wing government is trying to undermine environmental movements in order to pursue its policy of achieving faster economic growth. The Government may force through the implementation of its development policies in disregard to the interest of the affected population. However, in the changing socio‐political environment of the country the affected people will not remain silent and will counter the non‐consultative non‐inclusive policies of the government. Environmental protests might erupt sudden and become more violent, can initiate highly disruptive and rigid social actions to stop the on‐going projects, and be able to organize and mobilize support outside the country. The suppressive and manipulative actions of a government may suppress environmental protests at the surface level, but it will not be able to addresses the root of the problem or to secure lasting benefits of the development projects.
The challenge of ‘human’ sustainability for Indian mega‐cities ‐ A critical appraisal of slum demolition and slum policies in Delhi Véronique Dupont Institute of Research for Development (IRD) / Centre for Social Sciences Studies on Africa, America and Asia (CESSMA), France This paper deals with the “human” dimension of sustainability in Indian mega‐cities, specially the issue of social equity approached through the housing requirements of the urban poor. Indian mega‐cities are faced with an acute shortage in adequate housing, which has resulted in the growth of illegal slums or squatter settlements. Since the 1990s, the implementation of urban renewal projects, infrastructure expansion and “beautification” drives, in line with the requirements of globalising cities, have resulted in many slum demolitions, which increased the numbers of homeless people. Delhi exemplifies such trends.
This paper’s main objective is to appraise the adequacy of slum clearance and resettlement and rehabilitation policies implemented in Delhi in order to address the challenge of slums. Do such policies alleviate the problem of lack of decent housing for the urban poor, or to what extent do they also aggravate their situation? It combines two approaches: firstly, a statistical assessment of squatters’ relocation and slum demolition without resettlement over the last two decades, completed by an analysis of the conditions of implementation of the resettlement policy; and, secondly, a qualitative and critical analysis of the recently launched strategy of in‐situ rehabilitation under public‐private partnership. Finally, we try to go beyond the sole case of Delhi and draw some conclusions regarding slum policies in Indian cities.
India‐China Relations: Prospects for the future Arun Kumar Sahu Indian Council for Cultural Relations, India After June 2014, three major developments have happened in India. Mr. Narendra Modi came to power with a majority in the parliament, for the first time in the last 30 years, he invited all leaders of the SAARC to his swearing‐in ceremony, the rest of the world including the US and Europe has accepted him as a leader of India who can deliver on promises and President Obama has become the first US President to be the Chief Guest at the 66th Republic Day of India on 26 January, 2015. The Modi government has articulated its foreign policy priority so far based on “neighbourhood first” and “act East and look West” focus. Do these initiatives open new possibilities in India’s engagements with both the ‘established’ and the ‘emerging’ powers? President Xi Jinping visited India in September 2014 and was accorded a very high visibility reception. Promises have been made for enhanced political, economic and cultural engagements, both bilateral and multilateral. Nevertheless, analysts believe that the relationship does not enjoy the level of mutual trust that it should due to the outstanding issues arising out of the India‐China border dispute. The present paper intends to examine some of the new emerging trends between India‐China relations.
Social action and cultures of service in the BrAsian city John Zavos School of Arts, University of Manchester, United Kingdom This paper explores ideas of devotional service and charity in the context of diasporic identity formation amongst South Asian communities in Britain. Focusing on organisations associated in one way or another with religion, the paper notes how ideas such as seva and sadaqa have developed new inflections in recent years, moving from an emphasis on community consolidation and the reiteration of ‘homeland’ ties, to a political engagement with British society, and a re‐negotiation of the location of specific religious communities within that society. The paper draws on postcolonial theory to explore the implications of these moves, asking to what extent they represent an attempt to resist the predicament of a hyphenated British‐Asian identity, which implicitly represents these communities by reference to the residues of a racially‐informed colonial past.
BIOGRAPHIES
Arun Kumar SAHU, Joint Secretary, Ministry of External Affairs & Deputy Director General, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, Government of India, joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1996. He served in Indian Embassy in Beijing twice (as Second Secretary from 1998‐2002 and political Counsellor from 2010‐2013), London and Tehran. He also served as Under Secretary looking after China (2002 – 2004) and as Director (2013‐2014) looking after two of India’s important neighbours, Nepal & Bhutan at the Ministry of External Affairs, New Delhi. Two of his recent articles include: “Two to Tango: The US and China in the Asia‐Pacific, Strategic Analysis, Volume: 38: 4, July 2014” and “Future of India‐Nepal Relations: Can China be a factor? Strategic Analysis (forthcoming)”. He holds a Master’s degree in War in the Modern World (WiMW) from King’s College London and a Master’s degree in Linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He speaks English, Hindi and Mandarin.
Ashok SWAIN is a Professor at the Department of Peace and Conflict Research and at the Department of Earth Sciences of Uppsala University, Sweden. He received his PhD from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi in 1991, and since then he has been teaching at the Uppsala University. He has been a Mac Arthur Fellow at the University of Chicago and visiting professor at UN Research Institute for Social Development, Geneva; University of Witwatersrand, South Africa, University of Science, Malaysia, University of British Columbia, University of Maryland, Stanford University and McGill University. He has written extensively on emerging security challenges, international water sharing issues, and democracy and protest movements.
Christophe JAFFRELOT is Senior research fellow at CERI (Centre d’Etudes et de Recherches Internationales) at Sciences Po (Paris), and research director at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique), Professor of Indian Politics and Sociology at the King’s India Institute (London), Global Scholar at Princeton University and Non‐Resident Schola at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and International Development. Among his publications all originally by Hurst in London and Columbia University Press in New York are The Hindu nationalist movement and Indian politics, 1925 to 1990s, New Delhi, Penguin, 1999, India’s Silent Revolution. The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India, New Delhi, Permanent Black, 2003 and Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability. Analysing and Fighting Caste, New Delhi, Permanent Black 2005. He has also co‐edited with Laurent Gayer, Muslims in Indian cities. Trajectories of marginalization, New Delhi, HarperCollins, 2012.
Des GASPER works at the International Institute of Social Studies in The Hague, a graduate school in Erasmus University Rotterdam, currently as Professor of Human Development, Development Ethics and Public Policy. He studied economics, international development and policy analysis at universities in Britain, worked through the 1980s as a government planner and university lecturer in Africa, and was a Visiting Professor in 2005‐08 for the Research Centre on Well‐Being in Developing Countries at the University of Bath. He has undertaken work in Bangladesh, Botswana, India, Malawi, Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe. In recent years his main research has been on issues of well‐being and human security, including in relation to the fields of migration and climate change, asking whose interests are considered and prioritised in research, policy analyses, declared policies, and actual institutions and practices. This work uses methods of interpretive policy analysis and perspectives from development ethics and global ethics, for example as in The Ethics
of Development (Edinburgh University Press, 2004; Sage India, 2005).
Gopal GURU is Professor of Political Science, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has also obtained his Ph.D. from the same University on Politics of Representation. He has participated in national and international conferences. He has finished a book on Humiliation: Claims and Context by Oxford University Press and Cracked Mirror (with Sundar Sarukkai) by Oxford University Press, New Delhi. Lately he has been taking keen interest in moral and political philosophy.
Gurpreet MAHAJAN is Professor at the Centre for Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University. She has written extensively on issues of multiculturalism, minority rights, secularism and civil society. She is the author of Explanation and Understanding in the Human Sciences (OUP 1992; Second Edition 1997; Third Edition 2011), Identities and Rights: Aspects of Liberal Democracy in India (OUP 1998), The Multicultural Path: Issues of Diversity and Discrimination in Democracy (Sage 2002), and India: Political Ideas and the Making of a Democratic Discourse (Zed Books 2013). Her other recent publications include Religion, Community and Development: Changing Contours of Politics and Policy in India (Routledge 2010), Accommodating Diversity: Ideas and Institutional Practices (OUP 2011).
James MANOR is Emeka Anyoaku Professor Emeritus of Commonwealth Studies in the School of Advanced Study, University of London. He has previously taught at Yale, Harvard and Leicester Universities, and at the Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex. He specialises in politics and state‐society relations in India, but he has also worked extensively on Sri Lanka, and has done research in seven Africa countries, plus Brazil and Cambodia. He is currently writing a book on the implications for local‐level power dynamics and social interactions of the declining acceptance of caste hierarchies in rural India. He also coordinates a major comparative research project on the political and policy processes that have led governments in Brazil, India, China and South Africa to intensify efforts to tackle poverty and inequality since about 2002.
John ZAVOS is Senior Lecturer in South Asian Studies at the University of Manchester, and Editor of the journal Contemporary South Asia. He is the co‐author (with Jacqueline Suthren Hirst) of Religious Traditions in Modern South Asia (Routledge 2011), and co‐editor (with, amongst others, Pralay Kanungo) of Public Hinduisms (Sage 2012). In recent years he has researched and written numerous articles on Hinduism and Hindu organisations in the UK, including ’Small Acts, Big Society: Sewa and Hindu (nationalist) Identity in Britain’ (Ethnic and Racial Studies 2015). He has also worked extensively on the Hindu nationalist movement and is the author of The Emergence of Hindu Nationalism in India (Oxford University Press 2000). He holds a Ph.D in Theology and Religious Studies from the University of Bristol, and an M.Phil in Modern Indian History from Jawaharlal Nehru University.
Meenakshi JAIN is currently Associate Professor of History at Gargi College, University of Delhi. Her areas of interest include the changing nature of caste and community relations in India. Her doctoral dissertation and subsequent early research focused particularly on the role of the emerging Other Backward Castes in effecting a major shift in Indian politics. While a Fellow at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, she researched on Hindu‐Muslim relations during the period 1757 to 1857. Earlier, she had authored a textbook for high school students on the medieval period of Indian history.
Meenakshi Jain has also been interested in the shifting perceptions of India in the accounts of foreign travellers to the country. She has prepared a three volume work on the writings of foreign traders, adventurers, missionaries, scholars, and others from the eighth to the mid‐nineteenth century. The work covers their writings on political, economic, cultural, and religious affairs. A recent work of Meenakshi Jain is on the Ramjanmabhumi‐Babri Masjid dispute, a subject of considerable debate both in India and abroad. Her paper will focus on some of the contentious issues in the historical discourse in India and whether the term Hindu history is a valid one.
Peter Ronald DESOUZA taught political science at Goa University from 1987 till 2003. He joined the center for the Study of Developing Societies as Co‐Director of the Lokniti Programme on Comparative Democracy. In 2007 he was appointed the Director of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study at Shimla, where he served two terms till 2013. He was then entrusted with the task of setting up the International Centre for Human Development which he did as Interim Director between 2013‐14. He then returned to CSDS as professor. He has worked and published in the area of democratic politics and comparative politics especially of South Asia. He has written on Panchayati Raj, party hopping, the party system in India, electoral violence, Dalits and discrimination, trust and political institutions, and history and politics. His abiding interest lies in examining threats to freedom of expression in democratic polities, particularly the issue of the threshold of offence, and in issues of righting historical wrongs. In addition to numerous articles in Journals he has also edited four books, Contemporary India: Transitions (Sage, 2000) and India's Political Parties (with E. Sridharan, Sage, 2006), Indian Youth in a transforming World: Attitudes and Perceptions (with Sanjay Kumar and Sandeep Shastri, Sage 2009) and Speaking of Gandhi’s Death (with Tridip Suhrud, Orient Blackswan, 2010) . He was one of the three principal investigators of a five nation study on the State of Democracy in South Asia (OUP, 2006). deSouza has served as an expert and consultant for many organizations such as UNDP, World Bank, ICNRD, International IDEA, Ford Foundation, Inter Parliamentary Union, and TERI. He is also a regular columnist for The Hindu and The Tribune newspaper and Outlook magazine.
Pralay KANUNGO is currently the ICCR Chair for the Study of Contemporary India at IIAS / LIAS. Before coming to Leiden he was Professor and Chair, Centre for Political Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has been a Fellow at Nehru Memorial Museum and Library and Visiting Professor at Maison des Sciences De L'Homme, Paris. Kanungo is the author of RSS's Tryst with Politics: From Hedgewar to Sudarshan (2002) and co‐edited The Cultural Entrenchment of Hindutva (2011), Public Hinduisms (2012) and Politics of Ethnicity in India, Nepal and China (2013). He is the Principal Indian collaborator of India‐Europe research Networking Project on Electoral Changes in Urban and Rural India
Rahul MUKHERJI is Associate Professor of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore. He is concurrently Honorary Senior Fellow and Head (Research) at the Institute of South Asian Studies, NUS. His most recent books are: Globalization and Deregulation: Ideas, Interests and Institutional Change in India (OUP, 2014); and, the Oxford India Short Introduction to the Political Economy of Reforms in India (OUP, 2014).
Sebastian SCHWECKE is Assistant Professor for Modern Indian History at the Centre for Modern Indian Studies (CeMIS), University of Göttingen, Germany. He specialises in identity‐based politics in India and Pakistan, the study of social and political brokers and patronage, and the social history of markets in modern India. His current research traces the evolution of informally organised financial practices and monetary markets, including moneylending and speculative ‘games’, in the northern Indian city of Varanasi. His recent publications include New Cultural Identitarian Political Movements in Developing Societies. The Bharatiya Janata Party (Routledge, 2011) and the co‐edited volume The Transformation of Politicised Religion (Ashgate, 2015).
Swapan DASGUPTA is a political journalist writing for Indian publications for the past 30 years. Educated in Delhi and London, he secured his Ph.D from the School of Oriental and African Studies (London) in 1980 and was subsequently elected a Research Fellow of Nuffield College (1983‐85). He has occupied senior editorial positions in media organisations and was Managing Editor of India Today. Since 2003 he has been working independently as a political analyst, writing columns on politics for newspapers, broadcasting on TV and advising the corporate sector. His special areas of interest are the Bharatiya Janata Party and India’s electoral politics. Mr. Dasgupta has been conferred with the prestigious civilian award of 'Padma Bhushan' for distinguished service of high order in the discipline of literature and education.His more recent writings can be accessed on swapan55.com.
Véronique DUPONT is a senior research fellow in urban demography at the Institute of Research for Development (IRD), France, in the CESSMA research unit, namely the Centre for Social Sciences Studies on Africa, America and Asia, in Paris. She is presently the joint director of CESSMA. She is also an associated member of the Centre for Indian and South Asian Studies in Paris, and a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for Policy Research in Delhi. She was the Director of the Centre de Sciences Humaines of New Delhi from 2003 to 2007. The overarching aim of her research is to contribute to a better understanding of the socio‐spatial dynamics of large Indian metropolises. Her research themes include the interrelations between the transformations of metropolitan territories, urban policies, and residential and coping strategies of the populations. She is also interested in the mechanisms of social segregation and spatial fragmentation, which are associated to the process of metropolization. Her recent publications include: Cities in South Asia. Analysis and prospects (co‐edited with D.G. Heuzé, EHESS, Paris, 2007) ; Circulation and Territory in Contemporary South Asia (co‐edited with F. Landy, EHESS, Paris, 2010) ; Urban policies and the right to the city in India. Rights, responsibilities and citizenship (co‐edited with M.H. Zérah and St. Tawa Lama‐Rewal, UNESCO & CSH, New Delhi, 2011). She is preparing a volume on The politics of Slums in the Global South (with E. Braathen, D. Jordhus‐Lier and C. Sutherland, forthcoming, Routledge).