Under what conditions are some developing countries able to create stable democracies while others have slid into instability and authoritarianism? To address this classic question at the center of policy and academic debates, The Promise of Power investigates a striking puzzle: why, upon the 1947 Partition of British India, was India able to establish a stable democracy while Pakistan created an unstable autocracy? Drawing on interviews, colonial correspondence, and early government records to document the genesis of two of the twentieth century's most celebrated independence movements, Maya Tudor refutes the prevailing notion that a country's democratization prospects can be directly attributed to its levels of economic development or inequality. Instead, she demonstrates that the differential strengths of India's and Pakistan's independence movements directly account for their divergent democratization trajectories. She also establishes that these movements were initially constructed to pursue historically conditioned class interests. By illuminating the source of this enduring contrast, The Promise of Power offers a broad theory of democracy's origins that will interest scholars and students of comparative politics, democratization, state-building, and South Asian political history.

Guru Nanak had gifted the Sikhs with an ideology. Guru Angad had given them the Gurmukhi script. Guru Arjan Dev coalesced the hymns authored or collected by the Gurus and made them a people of the book. Guru Govind Rai created the Khalsa identity with its five symbols (Panj Kakke). Maharaja Ranjit Singh's conquests gave them the pride of race. British insistence on recruiting only keshdhari Sikhs encouraged the Khalsa to assert their distinct identity. The trend accelerated since the revolt of 1857, when John Lawrence reversed the initial successes of the rebels with the recovery of Delhi with forces from the Punjab. Sikhs were co-opted by the British with the clever broadcast of the Guru Tegh Bahadur myth that the Sikhs would be able to avenge the martyrdom of the Guru in Delhi with the help of a white race. Since then the Sikhs formed the backbone of the British Indian army and all their political influence flowed out of this military connection. The unexpected Congress concession of weightage to the Muslims in the Lucknow Pact of 1916 awakened the Sikhs to the necessity of the defence of Khalsa interests. Their vociferations compelled the British to concede a 19 per cent weightage for the Sikhs in the Montagu-Chelmsford Act of 1919. Gandhi appreciated the indispensable nature of Sikh support for the success of the British military machine. His attempt to subsume the Akali movement under the umbrella of the Non-Cooperation movement in the 1920s against the British and again his attempt to win over the Sikhs for his Civil Disobedience movement during the Lahore Congress in 1929 reflected this shrewd political sense. Sikhs continued to wrench concessions both from the British and the Congress as long as the Pax Britannica had any chance of survival. But as the negotiations for decolonization quickened after the end of the Second World War, the magic of Sikh arms could no longer work miracles for their slender numbers. While British statesmen from Cripps to Attlee – all burnt gallons of midnight oil thinking of an acceptable settlement of the Hindu-Muslim impasse, no one paid much attention to the pathetic quest of Sikh leaders since 1940 to work out an acceptable formula for readjusting the borders of the Punjab to accommodate the birthplace of the Gurus or the canal colonies, worked through long years of Sikh toil. This book traces the history of Sikhs in India, from the formation of a distinct Sikh identity, to their struggle for political representation in the pre-indedenpence era and their quest for an independent state. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka

This book examines different dimensions of farmer agitations in Punjab, India. It situates the 2020–2021 farmer resistance movement within the wider context of India’s post-independent development trajectory and provides a thorough analysis of various aspects of the farmers’ movement in India. The volume contextualizes Punjab’s history of farmer resistance, organization and mobilization strategies, the globalization of the movement, ways of both sustaining the movement and building resilience. While providing a critical understanding of the three farm laws introduced in India in 2020, the book looks at how they may impact farm operations and livelihoods in the post-Green Revolution period and evaluates strategies of inclusive mobilization for gathering support and sustaining the movement both within India and abroad, with special focus on the role of the Sikh diaspora. Essays in this volume also discuss the participation of women in the struggle and how their experience has the potential to transform gender relations both at home and in the public sphere. Integrated, comprehensive and concisely written by well-known experts, this book will be of interest to those involved with Punjab’s social, political and economic history, and students and researchers of food and agriculture in developing countries, peasant and social movements, Indian federalism and role of diasporas as non-state actors.

Sikhism traces its beginnings to Guru Nanak, who was born in 1469 and died in 1538 or 1539. With the life of Guru Nanak the account of the Sikh faith begins, all Sikhs acknowledging him as their founder. Sikhism has long been a little-understood religion and until recently they resided almost exclusively in northwest India. Today the total number of Sikhs is approximately twenty million worldwide. About a million live outside India, constituting a significant minority in the United Kingdom, Canada, and the United States. Many of them are highly visible, particularly the men, who wear beards and turbans, and they naturally attract attention in their new countries of domicile. This third edition of Historical Dictionary of Sikhism covers its history through a chronology, an introductory essay, and an extensive bibliography. The dictionary section has over 1000 cross-referenced entries on key persons, organizations, the principles, precepts and practices of the religion as well as the history, culture and social arrangements. This book is an excellent access point for students, researchers, and anyone wanting to know more about Sikhism.

Contrary to popular opinion, there is more to Sikhism than the distinctive dress. First of all, there is the emergence of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, and the long line of his successors. There are the precepts, many related to liberation through the divine name or nam. There is a particularly turbulent history in which the Sikhs have fought to affirm their beliefs and resist external domination that continues to this day. There is also, more recently, the dispersion from the Punjab throughout the rest of India and on to Europe and the Americas. With this emigration Sikhism has become considerably less exotic, but hardly better known to outsiders. This reference is an excellent place to learn more about the religion. It provides a chronology of events, a brief introduction that gives a general overview of the religion, and a dictionary with several hundred entries, which present the gurus and other leaders, trace the rather complex history, expound some of the precepts and concepts, describe many of the rites and rituals, and explain the meaning of numerous related expressions. All this, along with a bibliography, provides readers with an informative and accessible guide toward understanding Sikhism.