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The independence from the British rule was accompanied with partition of the Indian subcontinent on religious lines. Since partition in 1947, the two nation-states India and Pakistan have been hostile toward each other. Communalism has also been a major challenge in both these countries. The current study locates this continued hostility or the "enemy" narrative that the countries harbor not just of each other, but which also shapes the experience of a religious community within their territory. Limiting the inquiry to the Indian side, this paper explores the production of the "enemy" narrative through the discursive knowledge around partition and how it locates Muslims. The paper analyzes textbooks of two education boards in India and argues that the narrative excludes the contribution of Muslims in the nationalist movement, charts out an uncritical history of the demand for partition, and stigmatizes the Muslim community as "communal" and "unpatriotic." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents abstracts of papers on international relations. "International Relations Theory and the India-Pakistan Conflict," by E. Sridhara; "International Relations Theory and Minimum Deterrence," by Rajesh M. Basrur; "Conceptualizing Nuclear Deterrence: Pakistan's Posture," by Rasul Bakhsh Rais; "South Asia: The Irrelevance of Classical Nuclear Deterrence Theory," by Bharat Karnad.

The Sino-Indian rivalry traces its origins to the founding of each state in the late 1940s. Over the past decade Indian concerns over Chinese activities in South Asia have significantly increased. While New Delhi has sought to counter Beijing in South Asia, a key question is to what extent has China responded to India in the same region? Do we find evidence of a tit-for-tat rivalry escalation process in South Asia where both China and India are actively trying to counter each other? The central argument in this article is that China is not actively engaging in a direct form of rivalry reciprocity with India. While certain activities by Beijing in the region are designed to enhance Chinese influence and power, there is less evidence that these are a direct response to India. This is in contrast to New Delhi's behavior in the region where we do find evidence of Indian leaders directly responding to China. This articles' main contribution is to demonstrate that maintenance in asymmetrical positional rivalries does not require clearly identifiable points of escalation, or follow a linear path of a tit-for-tat action-reaction cycle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts at analyzing the process of reimagining and reproducing the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947 and Pakistan in 1971 in the textbooks at school level during the dictatorial regimes of Zia and Musharraf. What has appealed me to draw temporal, spatial, and thematic limitations for this research? To begin with, the dictatorial regimes, are believed to, have deeply relied on manipulating the Textbook Boards to further their agendas. Moreover, both the dictators are deemed to be opposing ideologues – e.g., Zia – a fanatic ruler – radicalized the textbooks while Musharraf – a champion of "Enlightened Moderation" – tried to deradicalize the curriculum. Additionally, partitions present two different scenarios for a fascinating comparison – e.g., in 1947, Pakistan was an emergent state while in 1971, a parent state. The content analysis of the textbooks reveals that both the regimes adopted Hegel's "philosophical" approach of treating history – selecting the personalities, events, or periods of their choice while excluding or discarding the other – to reinforce the national narrative. It further suggests that the state-sponsored curriculum fosters religious nationalism, rather than secular nationalism, which, subsequently, nurtures majoritarian nationalism and bolsters the process of othering the minority groups in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This review essay discusses two recent monographs on revolutionaries and political violence in South Asia, Kama Maclean's A Revolutionary History of Interwar India: Violence, Image, Voice and Text (2015) and Durba Ghosh's Gentlemanly Terrorists: Political Violence and the Colonial State in India, 1919-1947 (2017). Ghosh and Maclean's books contribute to an expanding body of scholarly work on anticolonial politics in India, a rich historiography on liberalism in the British Empire, and studies of visual culture and oral histories in modern South Asia. Specifically, Maclean's A Revolutionary History centers on the Hindustan Socialist Republican Army (HSRA) in Punjab and Delhi in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Maclean reconfigures the political terrain of India's independence struggle and illustrates the importance of revolutionary violence in nonviolent politics through unstudied visual sources and oral histories. In turn, Ghosh's Gentlemanly Terrorists focuses on Bengal, particularly revolutionaries in the Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar from 1919 to 1947. Complicating the history of colonial constitutionalism as a gradual expansion of rights and representation, Ghosh demonstrates how constitutional reforms that aimed to promote liberal governance in India were tied to repressive emergency legislation. This review essay addresses how Gentlemanly Terrorists and A Revolutionary History contribute to ongoing efforts to rethink both the political chronology and the wider political landscape of interwar India by incorporating revolutionaries into the story of independence. It also considers how Maclean and Ghosh creatively utilize non-state archives and vernacular sources, in conjunction with colonial records, to follow the retelling of revolutionary histories in different media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to argue that identity is an important variable in determining the motivational disposition of the Indian state’s external security behavior. It offers a constructivist explanation to India’s increasing engagement with the Asia-Pacific region and argues that India’s deepening engagement with the region is a reflection of its desire to craft a new external identity for itself – the identity of an “Asia-Pacific player.” The desire for an “Asia-Pacific identity” is in part precipitated by Indian political elite’s perception of a crisis in India’s external identity immediately after the end of the Cold War, along with its intuitive desire for recognition within the international system. This ongoing identity shift offers to explain many visible changes in India’s post-Cold War foreign security behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The idea of arms control has hardly taken root in South Asia. The existing nuclear arms control measures between India and Pakistan are patently inadequate for addressing the pressing nuclear concerns of the region. Although there are compelling reasons for nuclear arms control, India and Pakistan are reluctant to undertake worthwhile arms control initiatives. There are three key reasons for this: India and Pakistan are currently at the formative phase of their nuclear force-building and at this stage they are unlikely to undertake arms control measures fearing that it may affect their future force-building plans; their intense political rivalry is unfavorable for successful arms control; the extra-regional links—the China factor—of South Asia's security dilemma hinders prospects for arms control in the region. Owing to these factors, the prospects for successful arms control between India and Pakistan are not great in the foreseeable future, although the question remains as to how long they can ignore the issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the management of international rivers in India, China, Nepal, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. The author explains how through flood and drought, these rivers have negatively affected the large concentration of poor people in South Asia. The authors examine possibilities opened up by innovations in international cooperation and challenges of climate change. The authors also describe the challenges of managing Himalayan rivers due to climate change and industrialization and economic growth. The article also talks about the concept of multi-track diplomacy and applies it to the case of international river management.

Examines the political and strategic motivations of nuclear deterrence in South Asia. Nature of Western fears about the South Asian conflict environment; Discussion on the reliance of the U.S. on coercive diplomacy as a crisis management tool during the Cold War; Correlations between conventional forces, nuclear forces and coercive diplomacy.