Articles.

After decades of imperfect secularism, presided over by an often corrupt Congress establishment, Nehru's diverse republic has yielded to Hindu nationalism. India is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions. Since 2014, the ruling BJP has unleashed forces that are irreversibly transforming the country. Indian democracy, honed over decades, is now the chief enabler of Hindu extremism. Bigotry has been ennobled as a healthy form of self-assertion, and anti-Muslim vitriol has deluged the mainstream, with religious minorities living in terror of a vengeful majority. Congress now mimics Modi; other parties pray for a miracle. In this blistering critique of India from Indira Gandhi to the present, Komireddi lays bare the cowardly concessions to the Hindu right, convenient distortions of India's past and demeaning bribes to minorities that led to Modi's decisive electoral victory. If secularists fail to reclaim the republic from Hindu nationalists, Komireddi argues, India will become Pakistan by another name.

The Mumbai blasts of 1993, the attack on the Indian Parliament in 2001, Mumbai 26/11—cross-border terrorism has continued unabated. What can India do to motivate Pakistan to do more to prevent such attacks? In the nuclear times that we live in, where a military counter-attack could escalate to destruction beyond imagination, overt warfare is clearly not an option. But since outright peace-making seems similarly infeasible, what combination of coercive pressure and bargaining could lead to peace? The authors provide, for the first time, a comprehensive assessment of the violent and non-violent options available to India for compelling Pakistan to take concrete steps towards curbing terrorism originating in its homeland. They draw on extensive interviews with senior Indian and Pakistani officials, in service and retired, to explore the challenges involved in compellence and to show how non-violent coercion combined with clarity on the economic, social and reputational costs of terrorism can better motivate Pakistan to pacify groups involved in cross-border terrorism. Not War, Not Peace? goes beyond the much discussed theories of nuclear deterrence and counterterrorism strategy to explore a new approach to resolving old conflicts.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to Dalits in India from their origin to the present day. Despite a plethora of provisions for affirmative action in the Indian Constitution, Dalits still suffer exclusion on various counts. The book traces the multifarious changes that befell them through history, germination of Dalit consciousness during the colonial period and its f lowering under the legendary leadership of Babasaheb Ambedkar. It provides critical insights to their degeneration during the post-Ambedkar period, taking stock of all significant developments therein such as the rise of the Bahujan Samaj Party, Dalit capitalism, NGOization of the Dalit discourse and the various implicit or explicit emancipation schemas thrown up by them. It also discusses ideology, implicit strategy and tactics of the Dalit movement, touches upon one of the most contentious issues of increasing divergence between the Dalit and Marxist movements, and delineates the role of the state, both colonial and post-colonial, in shaping Dalit politics in particular ways. This new edition includes a new chapter providing the causal analysis of the rise of Hindutva under Narendra Modi, its fascist march obliterating the idea of India sketched out by the Constitution, and forecasts its future as the Hindu Rashtra – the Brahmanic-fascist state – which has been the goal of its progenitors. A tour de force, this book brings to the fore many key contemporary concerns and will be of great interest to activists, students, scholars and teachers of politics, political economy, sociology, anthropology, history and social exclusion studies.