Routledge/Asian Studies Association of Australia ASAA South Asian Series – serie

This book explains how colonial legacies and the postcolonial state of Pakistan negatively influenced the socio-political and cultural dynamics and the security situation in Pakistan’s Pashtun ‘tribal’ areas, formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It offers a local perspective on peace and conflict resolution in Pakistan’s Pashtun ‘tribal’ region.Discussing the history and background of the former-FATA region, the role of Pashtun conflict resolution mechanism of Jirga, and the persistence of colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) in the region, the author argues that the persistence of colonial legacies in the Pashtun ‘tribal’ areas, especially the FCR, coupled with the overarching influence of the military on security policy has negatively impacted the security situation in the region. By focusing on the Jirga and Jirga-based Lashkars (or Pashtun militias), the book demonstrates how Pashtuns have engaged in their own initiatives to handle the rise of militancy in their region. Moreover, the book contends that, even after the introduction of constitutional reforms and FATA’s merger with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, little has changed in the region, especially regarding the treatment of ‘tribal’ Pashtuns as equal citizens of Pakistan. This book explains, in detail, why indigenous methods of peace and conflict resolution, such as the Jirga, could play "some" role towards long-term peace in the South Asian region.Historically and contextually informed with a focus on North-West Pakistan, this book will be of interest to academics researching South Asian Studies, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, terrorism, and traditional justice and restorative forms of peace-making.

This book is an ethnographic exploration of slum children’s participation in NGO programs that centres children’s narratives as key to understanding the lived experience of development in India where 50% of the population is under the age of 25. Weaving theoretical and methodological interventions from anthropology, childhood studies and development studies with children’s own narratives and images, the author foregrounds children’s lifeworlds whilst documenting the extent to which these lifeworlds are shaped by the twin forces of marginalisation and aspiration. The book documents NGO campaigns targeting child marriage, sanitation and hygiene, gendered violence and bullying, and depicts and examines children’s sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes reluctant, and sometimes indifferent approach to narrating and performing development. It assesses the way in which children from four slum communities in New Delhi navigate the multiplicities and contradictions of development by analysing the stories, posters and performances children produce for NGOs. Moreover, the book argues that engagement with children’s narratives and performances provide valuable insights into how development attains meaning, garners consensus, fails, succeeds and circulates in a myriad of unexpected ways which consistently defy any assumptions about ‘underdeveloped’ subjectivities.The first book to interrogate the substance and subjectivities produced in the development of NGO organisations offering extra-curricular programs directed towards more intangible and experiential ends, it will be of interest to researchers working in anthropology, development studies, childhood studies and South Asian studies. The book also speaks to scholars working on issues of poverty, rural-urban migration, gender justice, slums and youth.

India has become known in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia as ‘the world’s largest democracy’, a ‘natural ally’, the ‘democratic counterweight’ to China and a trading partner of ‘massive economic potential’. This new foreign policy orthodoxy assumes that India will join with these four states and act just as any other democracy would. A set of political and think tank elites has emerged which seek to advance the cause of a culturally superior, if ill-defined, ‘Anglosphere’. Building on postcolonial and constructivist approaches to international relations, this book argues that the same Eurocentric assumptions about India pervade the foreign policies of the Anglosphere states, international relations theory and the idea of the Anglosphere. The assertion of a shared cultural superiority has long guided the foreign policies of the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, and this has been central to these states’ relationships with postcolonial India. This book details these difficulties through historical and contemporary case studies, which reveal the impossibility of drawing India into Anglosphere-type relationships. At the centre of India-Anglosphere relations, then, is not a shared resonance over liberal ideals, but a postcolonial clash over race, identity and hierarchy.A valuable contribution to the much-needed scholarly quest to follow a critical lens of inquiry into international relations, this book will be of interest to academics and advanced students in international relations, Indian foreign policy, Asian studies, and those interested in the ‘Anglosphere’ as a concept in international affairs.

Analyses of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009) overwhelmingly represent it as an ethnonationalist contest, prolonging postcolonial arguments on the creation and dissolution of the incipient nation-state since independence in 1948. While colonial divide-and-rule policies, the rise of ethnonationalist lobbies, structural discrimination and majoritarian democracy have been established as grounds for inter-ethnic hostility, there are other significant transformative forces that remain largely unacknowledged in postcolonial analyses.This ambitious multiscalar spatial study of civil war in Sri Lanka offers an intersectional, de-ethnicised analysis of political sovereignty drawn out by the struggle for territory. Based on vital retrospective findings from the five-year postwar period, when wartime hostilities were still festering, it convincingly links ethnonationalism to postnational border politics, marketisation, militarised securitisation and illiberal democracy. This book argues that internecine conflict exposes the implicit violence within nation-state formations; mass human displacements heighten collective and individual ontological insecurity and neoliberalism makes the nation porous in unforeseen ways. Based around three themes – normative spaces, human mobilities and exilic states – it is organised into ten comprehensive, chapter-based explorations of a range of spatial units, including homes, cities, routes, camps and experiences of ruin that were irrevocably politicised by protracted conflict. Focusing on their material transformations over a thirty-seven-year period, the book explores what can be known of the war if we look beyond ethnicity to other salient, shared geographical features of this embattled history. The book uncovers how fealty to exclusionary cultures of political sovereignty aligns us with their violence, limiting our capacity for empathy, a boundary seemingly exacerbated by neoliberal opportunities.Making use of Sri Lanka as a case study to test geographic, architectural and urban methodologies for understanding violence, this book acts as a provocation to rethink current readings of the particular case study while reflecting on the more general impact of marketisation and militarisation in Asia. It will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, including those scholars interested in South Asian history, politics and civil war, South Asian studies, border studies, geography and architecture and urban studies.

The conflict in Nepal (1996 – 2006) resulted in an estimated 15,000 deaths, 1,300 disappearances, along with other serious human rights and humanitarian law violations. Demands for peace, democracy, accountability and development, have abounded in the post-conflict context. Although the conflict catalysed major changes in the social and political landscape in Nepal, the transitional justice (TJ) process has remained deeply contentious and fragmented.This book provides an in-depth analysis of transitional justice process in Nepal. Drawing on interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders, including victims, ex-combatants, community members, human rights advocates, journalists and representatives from diplomatic missions, international organisations and the donor community, it reveals the differing viewpoints, knowledge, attitudes and preferences about TJ and other post-conflict issues in Nepal. The author develops an actor typology and an action spectrum, which can be used in Nepal and other post-conflict contexts. The actor typology identifies four main groups of TJ actors—experts, brokers, implementers and victims—and highlights who is making claims and on behalf of whom. The action spectrum, based on contentious politics literature and resistance literature, demonstrates the strategies actors use to shape the TJ process. This book argues that the potential of TJ lies in these dynamics of contention. It is by letting these dynamics play out that different conceptualisations of TJ can arise. While doing so may lead to practical challenges and produce situations that are normatively undesirable for some actors, particularly when certain political parties and national actors seem to ‘hijack’ TJ, remaining steadfast to the dominant TJ paradigm is also undesirable.As the first book to provide a single case study on TJ in Nepal, it makes theoretical and empirical contributions to: TJ research in Nepal and the Asia-Pacific more broadly, the politics versus justice binary and the concept of victimhood, among others. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in the study of transitional justice, peace and conflict studies, human rights, sociology, political science, criminology, law, anthropology and South Asian Studies, as well as policy-makers and NGOs.

After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the country has experienced large-scale transformations owing to national and international migration, urbanization, the development of many national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and economic dynamism. Globalization and economic liberalization have created opportunities to develop sustainable social policies by strengthening the national economy of the country. Major progress has been made in closing the gender gap, and the Constitution of Bangladesh provides equality of status and opportunity to all its citizens irrespective of sex. However, domestic violence perpetuated against women is a common phenomenon in Bangladesh.This book is a study about domestic violence against women in Bangladeshi society. It delineates, in particular, why and how some women become the victims of domestic violence in the changing socio-economic setting of Bangladesh. The author explores the multiple contexts in which domestic violence occurs by focusing on the everyday experience of women subjected to this violence. The book shows how changing socio-economic setting, urbanization and the growing demand for female labor influences the phenomenon and experience of domestic violence. It demonstrates that domestic violence is entangled in a complex web of institutionalized social relations that necessitates a structural and contextual understanding of the production of such violence in family, kinship and gender relations. Finally, it identifies factors that cause, perpetuate, and mitigate domestic violence or give strength to women to struggle and raise their voices or take shelter in the law against the perpetrators of domestic violence.A novel contribution to our understanding of how gender relationships are differently constituted and contested in the everyday lives of Bangladeshi women, both in natal and affinal families, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of Sociology, Gender and Law and South Asian Studies.

This book is an ethnographic exploration of slum children’s participation in NGO programs that centres children’s narratives as key to understanding the lived experience of development in India where 50% of the population is under the age of 25. Weaving theoretical and methodological interventions from anthropology, childhood studies and development studies with children’s own narratives and images, the author foregrounds children’s lifeworlds whilst documenting the extent to which these lifeworlds are shaped by the twin forces of marginalisation and aspiration. The book documents NGO campaigns targeting child marriage, sanitation and hygiene, gendered violence and bullying, and depicts and examines children’s sometimes enthusiastic, sometimes reluctant, and sometimes indifferent approach to narrating and performing development. It assesses the way in which children from four slum communities in New Delhi navigate the multiplicities and contradictions of development by analysing the stories, posters and performances children produce for NGOs. Moreover, the book argues that engagement with children’s narratives and performances provide valuable insights into how development attains meaning, garners consensus, fails, succeeds and circulates in a myriad of unexpected ways which consistently defy any assumptions about ‘underdeveloped’ subjectivities.The first book to interrogate the substance and subjectivities produced in the development of NGO organisations offering extra-curricular programs directed towards more intangible and experiential ends, it will be of interest to researchers working in anthropology, development studies, childhood studies and South Asian studies. The book also speaks to scholars working on issues of poverty, rural-urban migration, gender justice, slums and youth.

This book explains how colonial legacies and the postcolonial state of Pakistan negatively influenced the socio-political and cultural dynamics and the security situation in Pakistan’s Pashtun ‘tribal’ areas, formerly known as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). It offers a local perspective on peace and conflict resolution in Pakistan’s Pashtun ‘tribal’ region.Discussing the history and background of the former-FATA region, the role of Pashtun conflict resolution mechanism of Jirga, and the persistence of colonial-era Frontier Crimes Regulations (FCR) in the region, the author argues that the persistence of colonial legacies in the Pashtun ‘tribal’ areas, especially the FCR, coupled with the overarching influence of the military on security policy has negatively impacted the security situation in the region. By focusing on the Jirga and Jirga-based Lashkars (or Pashtun militias), the book demonstrates how Pashtuns have engaged in their own initiatives to handle the rise of militancy in their region. Moreover, the book contends that, even after the introduction of constitutional reforms and FATA’s merger with the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, little has changed in the region, especially regarding the treatment of ‘tribal’ Pashtuns as equal citizens of Pakistan. This book explains, in detail, why indigenous methods of peace and conflict resolution, such as the Jirga, could play "some" role towards long-term peace in the South Asian region.Historically and contextually informed with a focus on North-West Pakistan, this book will be of interest to academics researching South Asian Studies, International Relations, Peace and Conflict Studies, terrorism, and traditional justice and restorative forms of peace-making.

In India about 123,000 people take their own lives each year, the second highest total in the world. There is a suicide death in India almost every 4 minutes, and it is the leading cause of death for rural Indians especially women in early adulthood. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of suicide in India based on original research as well as existing studies, and looks at the issue in an international, sociological and historical context.The author looks at the reliability of suicide data in India, and goes on to discuss various factors relating to suicide, including age, gender, education and marriage. Among its findings, the book exposes a hidden youth suicide ‘crisis’ in India which is argued to be far more serious than the better known crisis of farmer suicides. The book dispels many myths that are commonly associated with suicide, and highlights a neglected public health problem. Suicide in the region of Pondicherry is looked at in detail, as well as in the Indian Diaspora. This book is a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, as well as studies in Mental Health and Sociology.

In India about 123,000 people take their own lives each year, the second highest total in the world. There is a suicide death in India almost every 4 minutes, and it is the leading cause of death for rural Indians especially women in early adulthood. This book presents a comprehensive analysis of suicide in India based on original research as well as existing studies, and looks at the issue in an international, sociological and historical context.The author looks at the reliability of suicide data in India, and goes on to discuss various factors relating to suicide, including age, gender, education and marriage. Among its findings, the book exposes a hidden youth suicide ‘crisis’ in India which is argued to be far more serious than the better known crisis of farmer suicides. The book dispels many myths that are commonly associated with suicide, and highlights a neglected public health problem. Suicide in the region of Pondicherry is looked at in detail, as well as in the Indian Diaspora. This book is a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, as well as studies in Mental Health and Sociology.

After the independence of Bangladesh in 1971, the country has experienced large-scale transformations owing to national and international migration, urbanization, the development of many national and international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and economic dynamism. Globalization and economic liberalization have created opportunities to develop sustainable social policies by strengthening the national economy of the country. Major progress has been made in closing the gender gap, and the Constitution of Bangladesh provides equality of status and opportunity to all its citizens irrespective of sex. However, domestic violence perpetuated against women is a common phenomenon in Bangladesh.This book is a study about domestic violence against women in Bangladeshi society. It delineates, in particular, why and how some women become the victims of domestic violence in the changing socio-economic setting of Bangladesh. The author explores the multiple contexts in which domestic violence occurs by focusing on the everyday experience of women subjected to this violence. The book shows how changing socio-economic setting, urbanization and the growing demand for female labor influences the phenomenon and experience of domestic violence. It demonstrates that domestic violence is entangled in a complex web of institutionalized social relations that necessitates a structural and contextual understanding of the production of such violence in family, kinship and gender relations. Finally, it identifies factors that cause, perpetuate, and mitigate domestic violence or give strength to women to struggle and raise their voices or take shelter in the law against the perpetrators of domestic violence.A novel contribution to our understanding of how gender relationships are differently constituted and contested in the everyday lives of Bangladeshi women, both in natal and affinal families, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of Sociology, Gender and Law and South Asian Studies.

Analyses of the Sri Lankan civil war (1983–2009) overwhelmingly represent it as an ethnonationalist contest, prolonging postcolonial arguments on the creation and dissolution of the incipient nation-state since independence in 1948. While colonial divide-and-rule policies, the rise of ethnonationalist lobbies, structural discrimination and majoritarian democracy have been established as grounds for inter-ethnic hostility, there are other significant transformative forces that remain largely unacknowledged in postcolonial analyses.This ambitious multiscalar spatial study of civil war in Sri Lanka offers an intersectional, de-ethnicised analysis of political sovereignty drawn out by the struggle for territory. Based on vital retrospective findings from the five-year postwar period, when wartime hostilities were still festering, it convincingly links ethnonationalism to postnational border politics, marketisation, militarised securitisation and illiberal democracy. This book argues that internecine conflict exposes the implicit violence within nation-state formations; mass human displacements heighten collective and individual ontological insecurity and neoliberalism makes the nation porous in unforeseen ways. Based around three themes – normative spaces, human mobilities and exilic states – it is organised into ten comprehensive, chapter-based explorations of a range of spatial units, including homes, cities, routes, camps and experiences of ruin that were irrevocably politicised by protracted conflict. Focusing on their material transformations over a thirty-seven-year period, the book explores what can be known of the war if we look beyond ethnicity to other salient, shared geographical features of this embattled history. The book uncovers how fealty to exclusionary cultures of political sovereignty aligns us with their violence, limiting our capacity for empathy, a boundary seemingly exacerbated by neoliberal opportunities.Making use of Sri Lanka as a case study to test geographic, architectural and urban methodologies for understanding violence, this book acts as a provocation to rethink current readings of the particular case study while reflecting on the more general impact of marketisation and militarisation in Asia. It will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience, including those scholars interested in South Asian history, politics and civil war, South Asian studies, border studies, geography and architecture and urban studies.

India has become known in the US, the UK, Canada and Australia as ‘the world’s largest democracy’, a ‘natural ally’, the ‘democratic counterweight’ to China and a trading partner of ‘massive economic potential’. This new foreign policy orthodoxy assumes that India will join with these four states and act just as any other democracy would. A set of political and think tank elites has emerged which seek to advance the cause of a culturally superior, if ill-defined, ‘Anglosphere’. Building on postcolonial and constructivist approaches to international relations, this book argues that the same Eurocentric assumptions about India pervade the foreign policies of the Anglosphere states, international relations theory and the idea of the Anglosphere. The assertion of a shared cultural superiority has long guided the foreign policies of the US, the UK, Canada and Australia, and this has been central to these states’ relationships with postcolonial India. This book details these difficulties through historical and contemporary case studies, which reveal the impossibility of drawing India into Anglosphere-type relationships. At the centre of India-Anglosphere relations, then, is not a shared resonance over liberal ideals, but a postcolonial clash over race, identity and hierarchy.A valuable contribution to the much-needed scholarly quest to follow a critical lens of inquiry into international relations, this book will be of interest to academics and advanced students in international relations, Indian foreign policy, Asian studies, and those interested in the ‘Anglosphere’ as a concept in international affairs.

This book analyses the aid, politics and the war of narratives between the US and Pakistan under the Kerry Lugar Berman Act (2009–2013), using the security-development nexus as a framing discourse and taking a decolonial approach to the subject.The book explores the politics of US foreign aid to Pakistan, with regard to the issues of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘agency’, to analyse the notions of aid, power and narratives in the asymmetrical US-Pakistan relations. Based on primary interviews and extensive data analysis of US foreign aid datasets, the book specifically argues that foreign aid is based under the hubris of the security-development nexus, which encourages a dialectical power struggle between the US and Pakistan, and between the civil and military actors inside Pakistan, which use the indivisibility of security and development to advance their strategic interests over each other.This book is a timely analysis given the recent political turmoil in Pakistan that saw the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan who blamed the Biden Administration for orchestrating a “regime change” conspiracy against his government. Interdisciplinary and relevant to academic and policy debates, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Development Studies, International Relations, Policy Studies, Area Studies and, in particular, South Asian Politics.

This book analyses the aid, politics and the war of narratives between the US and Pakistan under the Kerry Lugar Berman Act (2009–2013), using the security-development nexus as a framing discourse and taking a decolonial approach to the subject.The book explores the politics of US foreign aid to Pakistan, with regard to the issues of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘agency’, to analyse the notions of aid, power and narratives in the asymmetrical US-Pakistan relations. Based on primary interviews and extensive data analysis of US foreign aid datasets, the book specifically argues that foreign aid is based under the hubris of the security-development nexus, which encourages a dialectical power struggle between the US and Pakistan, and between the civil and military actors inside Pakistan, which use the indivisibility of security and development to advance their strategic interests over each other.This book is a timely analysis given the recent political turmoil in Pakistan that saw the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan who blamed the Biden Administration for orchestrating a “regime change” conspiracy against his government. Interdisciplinary and relevant to academic and policy debates, this book will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Development Studies, International Relations, Policy Studies, Area Studies and, in particular, South Asian Politics.

Citizenship in Dalit and Indigenous Australian Literatures examines the difference in citizenship as experienced by the communities of Dalits in India and Aboriginals in Australia through an analysis of select literature by authors of these marginalised groups. Aligning the voices of two disparate communities, the author creates a transnational dialogue between the subaltern communities of the two countries, India and Australia, through the literature produced by the two communities. The Covid-19 pandemic has made the divide that exists between the performative citizenship rights enjoyed by the Dalits and the aboriginals and the respective dominant communities of their countries more apparent. The author addresses the issue of this disparity between discursive and performative citizenship through a detailed analysis of select Dalit and Australian aboriginal autobiographies, in particular the works by Dalit autobiographers, Baby Kamble and Aravind Malagatti and aboriginal autobiographers Alice Nannup and Gordon Briscoe. The book uses the dominant tropes of the individual autobiographies as a background to unfurl the denial of citizenship, both in the discursive and the performative form, using the parameters of equal citizenship. In doing so, the author also raises important, groundbreaking questions: How is the performativity of citizenship foregrounded by the Dalits and aboriginals in the literary counter-public? How does this foregrounding evoke violent retribution from the dominant sections? And does the continued violation of performative citizenship point to the dysfunctionality of the performative citizenship status accorded to the Dalits and the aboriginals? Questioning the liberal legacy of political, civil and social citizenship, this book will be of interest to researchers studying Dalit and Aboriginal Literature, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies and World Literature, South Asian Studies and researchers dealing with the question of citizenship.

Citizenship in Dalit and Indigenous Australian Literatures examines the difference in citizenship as experienced by the communities of Dalits in India and Aboriginals in Australia through an analysis of select literature by authors of these marginalised groups. Aligning the voices of two disparate communities, the author creates a transnational dialogue between the subaltern communities of the two countries, India and Australia, through the literature produced by the two communities. The Covid-19 pandemic has made the divide that exists between the performative citizenship rights enjoyed by the Dalits and the aboriginals and the respective dominant communities of their countries more apparent. The author addresses the issue of this disparity between discursive and performative citizenship through a detailed analysis of select Dalit and Australian aboriginal autobiographies, in particular the works by Dalit autobiographers, Baby Kamble and Aravind Malagatti and aboriginal autobiographers Alice Nannup and Gordon Briscoe. The book uses the dominant tropes of the individual autobiographies as a background to unfurl the denial of citizenship, both in the discursive and the performative form, using the parameters of equal citizenship. In doing so, the author also raises important, groundbreaking questions: How is the performativity of citizenship foregrounded by the Dalits and aboriginals in the literary counter-public? How does this foregrounding evoke violent retribution from the dominant sections? And does the continued violation of performative citizenship point to the dysfunctionality of the performative citizenship status accorded to the Dalits and the aboriginals? Questioning the liberal legacy of political, civil and social citizenship, this book will be of interest to researchers studying Dalit and Aboriginal Literature, Interdisciplinary Literary Studies and World Literature, South Asian Studies and researchers dealing with the question of citizenship.

This book is a historical exploration of the social and cultural processes that led to the rise of the ideology of labor as a touchstone of Bengali Muslim politics in late colonial India.The book argues that the tremendous popularity of the Pakistan movement in Bengal is to be understood not just in terms of "communalization" of class politics, or even "separatist" demands of a religious minority living out anxieties of Hindu political majoritarianism, but in terms of a distinctively modern idea of Muslim self and culture which gave primacy to production/labor as the site where religious, moral, ethical, as well as economic value would be anchored. In telling the story of the formation of a modern Muslim identity, the book presents the conceptual congruence between Islam and egalitarianism as a distinctively early twentieth-century phenomenon, and the approach can be viewed as key to explaining the mass appeal of the desire for Pakistan.A novel contribution to the study of Bengal and Pakistan’s origins, the book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian history, the history of colonialism and end of empire, South Asian studies, including labor studies, Islamic Studies, and Muslim social and cultural history.

This book is a historical exploration of the social and cultural processes that led to the rise of the ideology of labor as a touchstone of Bengali Muslim politics in late colonial India.The book argues that the tremendous popularity of the Pakistan movement in Bengal is to be understood not just in terms of "communalization" of class politics, or even "separatist" demands of a religious minority living out anxieties of Hindu political majoritarianism, but in terms of a distinctively modern idea of Muslim self and culture which gave primacy to production/labor as the site where religious, moral, ethical, as well as economic value would be anchored. In telling the story of the formation of a modern Muslim identity, the book presents the conceptual congruence between Islam and egalitarianism as a distinctively early twentieth-century phenomenon, and the approach can be viewed as key to explaining the mass appeal of the desire for Pakistan.A novel contribution to the study of Bengal and Pakistan’s origins, the book will be of interest to researchers studying South Asian history, the history of colonialism and end of empire, South Asian studies, including labor studies, Islamic Studies, and Muslim social and cultural history.

South Asian Disability and Deaf Theatres investigates translocal intimacies in relation to twenty-first-century transnational South Asian disability theatres in order to lay out new possibilities for accessible theatres.The book provides a theoretical and methodological framework for thinking through the relationships between disability, translocal intimacies, and visceral ethnography. It presents new and innovative approaches to rethinking bodily, cultural, spatial, and performance practices in relation to disability and disability rights that cut across national, sociocultural, and artistic boundaries. The author presents a consideration of some of India’s specific theatre examples such as Mahesh Dattani’s Tara; Manjula Padmanabhan’s Harvest; Shyambazar Blind Opera House’s Brihannala; Jana Sanskriti’s The Wasteland: A Journey; and First Drop Change Foundation’s Playback Theatre. Through analyses of specific performances and theatre groups and theoretical explorations of visceral ethnography, disability theatres’ decolonising initiatives, and disability as method, this book furthers the project of creating the conditions for a radically accessible and open-door theatre for both the present and the future.The first book to cover theatre and Disability Studies in India, it shows that disability literature and theatres assist in delineating ways of reworking the politics of intimacy and belonging within and across differences. The book makes an important contribution to the broad field of theatre, performance and Disability Studies as well as Feminist Studies and South Asian Studies.

This book is a study of the UK-based Ahmadiyya Muslim community in the context of the twentieth-century South Asian diaspora. Originating in late nineteenth-century Punjab, the Ahmadis are today a vibrant international religious movement; they are also a group that has been declared heretic by other Muslims and one that continues to face persecution in Pakistan, the country the Ahmadis made their home after the partition of India in 1947.Structured as a series of case studies, the book focuses on the ways in which the Ahmadis balance the demands of faith, community and modern life in the diaspora. Following an overview of the history and beliefs of the Ahmadis, the chapters examine in turn the use of ceremonial occasions to consolidate a diverse international community; the paradoxical survival of the enchantments of dreams and charisma within the structures of an institutional bureaucracy; asylum claims and the ways in which the plight of asylum seekers has been strategically deployed to position the Ahmadis on the UK political stage; and how the planning and building of mosques serves to establish a home within the diaspora.Based on fieldwork conducted over several years in a range of formal and informal contexts, this timely book will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience from social and cultural anthropology, South Asian studies, the study of Islam and of Muslims in Europe, refugee, asylum and diaspora studies, as well as more generally religious studies and history.The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC BY-NC)] 4.0 license.

Women’s Empowerment and Microcredit Programs in India examines the value of microcredit-based self-help groups (SHGs) for women in India and provides an alternative model for women’s empowerment programming.The microcredit sector continues to boom globally - with private investors, governments and multilateral financial institutions all investing substantial amounts in self-help group programming. Nowhere is this more evident than in India, where the industry has further been deregulated in recent years. Much of the rationale for increased investment in microcredit is based on the idea that it improves ‘women’s empowerment’. But is this true? Researchers have fiercely debated the value of microcredit programs for women, with some arguing that it is exploitative, and others contending that it is empowering. This book provides new insights into women’s empowerment and microcredit programming, elaborating on the themes of power, dignity, mobility and solidarity. It takes a nuanced view of the complexities surrounding self-help group programming and women’s empowerment and argues that the model of microcredit self-help group programming is key to whether it helps or harms women. By focusing on the experiences and voices of microcredit self-help group members in West Bengal, India, this book elaborates on the idea of microcredit models existing on a continuum, from ‘smart economics’ to more holistic feminist versions of programming. It will be of interest to scholars in development studies, anthropology, sociology, gender studies and public policy and Asian Studies.

Women’s Empowerment and Microcredit Programs in India examines the value of microcredit-based self-help groups (SHGs) for women in India and provides an alternative model for women’s empowerment programming.The microcredit sector continues to boom globally - with private investors, governments and multilateral financial institutions all investing substantial amounts in self-help group programming. Nowhere is this more evident than in India, where the industry has further been deregulated in recent years. Much of the rationale for increased investment in microcredit is based on the idea that it improves ‘women’s empowerment’. But is this true? Researchers have fiercely debated the value of microcredit programs for women, with some arguing that it is exploitative, and others contending that it is empowering. This book provides new insights into women’s empowerment and microcredit programming, elaborating on the themes of power, dignity, mobility and solidarity. It takes a nuanced view of the complexities surrounding self-help group programming and women’s empowerment and argues that the model of microcredit self-help group programming is key to whether it helps or harms women. By focusing on the experiences and voices of microcredit self-help group members in West Bengal, India, this book elaborates on the idea of microcredit models existing on a continuum, from ‘smart economics’ to more holistic feminist versions of programming. It will be of interest to scholars in development studies, anthropology, sociology, gender studies and public policy and Asian Studies.

This book analyses the magnitude of the relationship between family background and adult occupational and educational outcomes and provides a comprehensive view of intergenerational mobility in the context of religious and caste dynamics in India.Based on nationally representative data sets, the book tracks educational and occupational mobility experiences of different socio-religious groups in contemporary India. Examining primary and secondary data to comprehend the macro picture and the micro details, the book offers insights into intra-generational occupational mobility and the perceptions and expectations of Muslim households. The book presents a classification of jobs and mobility analysis that is built on solid foundations of stratification theories. Moreover, it identifies data and presents evidence on the neighborhood effects in India.Offering an analysis of intergenerational advancement, this book is aimed at researchers in the field of economics, sociology, labor studies, development studies, minority and subaltern studies as well as those interested in the socio-economic issues of disadvantaged socio-religious groups in India.

This book analyses the magnitude of the relationship between family background and adult occupational and educational outcomes and provides a comprehensive view of intergenerational mobility in the context of religious and caste dynamics in India.Based on nationally representative data sets, the book tracks educational and occupational mobility experiences of different socio-religious groups in contemporary India. Examining primary and secondary data to comprehend the macro picture and the micro details, the book offers insights into intra-generational occupational mobility and the perceptions and expectations of Muslim households. The book presents a classification of jobs and mobility analysis that is built on solid foundations of stratification theories. Moreover, it identifies data and presents evidence on the neighborhood effects in India.Offering an analysis of intergenerational advancement, this book is aimed at researchers in the field of economics, sociology, labor studies, development studies, minority and subaltern studies as well as those interested in the socio-economic issues of disadvantaged socio-religious groups in India.

The Politics and Poetics of Indian Digital Diasporas explores the emancipatory potential and pitfalls of digital platforms and how well or how poorly they reflect intra-communal diversities within South Asian diasporic communities.This book brings together an international network of scholars, both established and emerging, to explore South Asian diasporic communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the U.K. It is a comparative cross-national analysis of the intersection of digital technologies and South Asian diasporas. The book centres on three key themes: the ever-presence of digital spaces and the importance of exploring them as focal points for defining and contesting identities; an exploration of how ‘home’ is represented in and across South Asian diasporic communities; and intra-communal diversity in South Asian diasporic communities. The chapters show how digital spaces sometimes create unprecedented opportunities for diasporic communities to mobilise (multi)cultures, sexuality, race, and queerness within South Asian diasporic communities and to move beyond ‘Desi’ and ‘Brown’ as homogenising identifiers. The contributors also demonstrate that digital spaces can be and have been used to reassert internal hegemonies far from homelands.Examining the discursive meanings of South Asian-ness – ‘Desi’, ‘Brown’, ‘South Asians’– the book foregrounds how it is defined, performed, and contested through digital platforms, in ways that redefine the concept of diaspora in innovative, non-territorialized, polyphonic, variegated, and dialogic ways. A novel contribution to the intersection of global digital inequalities, digital cultures and the South Asian diaspora, this book will be of interest to a wide scholarly audience of digital media, South Asian diaspora, culture and ethnicity, race, and the politics of resistance and counter-hegemonic mobilisations.Chapters 1 and 7 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Politics and Poetics of Indian Digital Diasporas explores the emancipatory potential and pitfalls of digital platforms and how well or how poorly they reflect intra-communal diversities within South Asian diasporic communities.This book brings together an international network of scholars, both established and emerging, to explore South Asian diasporic communities in the United States, Canada, Australia, and the U.K. It is a comparative cross-national analysis of the intersection of digital technologies and South Asian diasporas. The book centres on three key themes: the ever-presence of digital spaces and the importance of exploring them as focal points for defining and contesting identities; an exploration of how ‘home’ is represented in and across South Asian diasporic communities; and intra-communal diversity in South Asian diasporic communities. The chapters show how digital spaces sometimes create unprecedented opportunities for diasporic communities to mobilise (multi)cultures, sexuality, race, and queerness within South Asian diasporic communities and to move beyond ‘Desi’ and ‘Brown’ as homogenising identifiers. The contributors also demonstrate that digital spaces can be and have been used to reassert internal hegemonies far from homelands.Examining the discursive meanings of South Asian-ness – ‘Desi’, ‘Brown’, ‘South Asians’– the book foregrounds how it is defined, performed, and contested through digital platforms, in ways that redefine the concept of diaspora in innovative, non-territorialized, polyphonic, variegated, and dialogic ways. A novel contribution to the intersection of global digital inequalities, digital cultures and the South Asian diaspora, this book will be of interest to a wide scholarly audience of digital media, South Asian diaspora, culture and ethnicity, race, and the politics of resistance and counter-hegemonic mobilisations.Chapters 1 and 7 of this book are freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The conflict in Nepal (1996 – 2006) resulted in an estimated 15,000 deaths, 1,300 disappearances, along with other serious human rights and humanitarian law violations. Demands for peace, democracy, accountability and development, have abounded in the post-conflict context. Although the conflict catalysed major changes in the social and political landscape in Nepal, the transitional justice (TJ) process has remained deeply contentious and fragmented.This book provides an in-depth analysis of transitional justice process in Nepal. Drawing on interviews with a diverse range of stakeholders, including victims, ex-combatants, community members, human rights advocates, journalists and representatives from diplomatic missions, international organisations and the donor community, it reveals the differing viewpoints, knowledge, attitudes and preferences about TJ and other post-conflict issues in Nepal. The author develops an actor typology and an action spectrum, which can be used in Nepal and other post-conflict contexts. The actor typology identifies four main groups of TJ actors—experts, brokers, implementers and victims—and highlights who is making claims and on behalf of whom. The action spectrum, based on contentious politics literature and resistance literature, demonstrates the strategies actors use to shape the TJ process. This book argues that the potential of TJ lies in these dynamics of contention. It is by letting these dynamics play out that different conceptualisations of TJ can arise. While doing so may lead to practical challenges and produce situations that are normatively undesirable for some actors, particularly when certain political parties and national actors seem to ‘hijack’ TJ, remaining steadfast to the dominant TJ paradigm is also undesirable.As the first book to provide a single case study on TJ in Nepal, it makes theoretical and empirical contributions to: TJ research in Nepal and the Asia-Pacific more broadly, the politics versus justice binary and the concept of victimhood, among others. It will be of interest to a wide range of scholars in the study of transitional justice, peace and conflict studies, human rights, sociology, political science, criminology, law, anthropology and South Asian Studies, as well as policy-makers and NGOs.