In reaction to British imperialism during the 19th and 20th centuries, Indian Muslims and Hindus imagined and invented their separate and distinct religious communities and communal nationalisms. These were institutionalized in the subcontinent's political systems by the British government in collaboration with Indian politicians. Stern argues that this production of communalism has been crucial in structuring the composition and organization of South Asia's politically dominant classes, and that they, in turn, have been crucial in determining parliamentary democracy's growth or atrophy on the subcontinent. In what became India, the overwhelmingly Hindu National Congress formed a coalition of professionals and landed peasants, later joined by industrialists, that was friendly to the development of parliamentary democracy. In its western provinces, Pakistan's legacy from British government was a ruling coalition of landlords and civilian and military bureaucrats that has continued to impede the development of parliamentary democracy. Until 1971, this coalition equated parliamentary democracy with the loss of their dominance to Pakistan's Bengali majority. Only among them, in Pakistan's eastern province, now Bangladesh, was there a politically dominant coalition of classes that was friendly to the development of parliamentary democracy. It had the ironic effect in Pakistan of entrenching the west's anti-democratic coalition. Dogged by the legacies of twenty-four years as Pakistan's subordinate province, disorganization among its dominant classes and a vanished rural base, the development of parliamentary democracy in Bangladesh has been slow and uneven.

Title first published in 2003. Chowdhury looks at the problems of democratization and development as it relates to building democratic institutions in the newly democratizing countries such as Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.

This volume offers a collection of lucid, theoretically stimulating articles that explore and analyse the institutions and values which are salient in understanding political practices in South Asia. Combining a wide range of theoretical and empirical approaches, and blending the work of experts long established in their respective fields with refreshing and innovative approaches by younger scholars, this collaborative and cross-disciplinary endeavour facilitates a deeper understanding of the subcontinent's diverse and complex political and democratic practices in the 21st century.

"An examination of how dictators and democrats in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand built and sustained pro-growth political coalitions"--

"This report seeks to shift the locus of discourse on democracy away from the global North to 'most of the world'. It does so by examining democratic experience in South Asia - a region marked by poverty, illiteracy, complex diversities, and multiple and overlapping structures of social hierarchy-and by daring to ask not just what democracy has done to South Asia but also what South Asia has done to democracy. Based on the first - ever social scientific survey of political opinions and attitudes across the five countries in the region-Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka-the report offers a fresh analysis of the promise of democracy for the ordinary people, its institutional slippages, obstacles in its functioning, and its mixed outcomes. The report combines public opinion data with expert assessment, case studies, and dialogue with democracy activists."--BOOK JACKET.

The dramatic expansion of the media and communications sector since the 1990s has brought South Asia on the global scene as a major center for media production and consumption. This book is the first overview of media expansion and its political ramifications in South Asia during these years of economic reforms. From the puzzling liberalization of media under military dictatorship in Pakistan to the brutal killings of journalists in Sri Lanka, and the growing influence of social media in riots and political protests in India, Nepal and Bangladesh, the chapters analyse some of the most important developments in the media fields of contemporary South Asia. Attentive to colonial histories as well as connections within and beyond South Asia in the age of globalization, the chapters combine theoretically grounded studies with original empirical research to unravel the dynamics of media as politics. The chapters are organized around the three frames of participation, control and friction. They bring to the fore the double edged nature of publicity and containment inherent in media, thereby advancing postcolonial perspectives on the massive media transformation underway in South Asia and the global South more broadly. For the first time bringing together the cultural, regulatory and social aspects of media expansion in a single perspective, this interdisciplinary book fills the need for overview and analytical studies on South Asian media.

4. King vs. Parliament: Democratization in Nepal