This book examines how identities are formed and expressed in political, social and cultural contexts across South Asia. It is a comprehensive intervention on how, why and what identities have come to be, and takes a closer look at the complexities of their interactions. Drawing on an interdisciplinary approach, combining methodologies from history, literary studies, politics, and sociology, this book: • Explores the multiple ways in which personal and collective identities manifest and engage, are challenged and resisted across time and space.; • Highlights how the shared history of colonialism and partition, communal violence, bloodshed and pogrom are instrumental in understanding present-day developments in identity politics.; • Sheds light on a number of current themes such as borders and nations, race and ethnicity, identity politics and fundamentalism, language and regionalism, memory and community, and resistance and assertion. A key volume in South Asian Studies, this book will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of modern South Asian history, politics, sociology, literary studies and social exclusion.

This volume brings together sixteen articles on the religions, literatures and histories of South and Central Asia in tribute to Patrick Olivelle, one of North America’s leading Sanskritists and historians of early India. Over the last four decades, the focus of his scholarship has been on the ascetic and legal traditions of India, but his work as both a researcher and a teacher extends beyond early Indian religion and literature. ‘Religion and Identity and South Asia and Beyond’ is a testament to that influence. The contributions in this volume, many by former students of Olivelle, are committed to linguistic and historical rigor, combined with sensitivity to how the study of Asia has been changing over the last several decades.

This book examines medium of instruction in education and studies its social, economic, and political significance in the lives of people living in South Asia. It provides insight into the meaning of medium and what makes it so important to identity, aspiration, and inequality. It questions the ideologized associations between education and social and spatial mobility and discusses the gender- and class-based marginalization that comes with vernacular-medium education. The volume also considers how policy measures, such as the Right to Education (RTE) Act in India, have failed to address the inequalities brought by medium in schools, and investigates questions on language access, inclusion, and rights. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and in-depth interviews, the book will be indispensable for students and scholars of anthropology, education studies, sociolinguistics, sociology, and South Asian studies. It will also appeal to those interested in language and education in South Asia, especially the role of language in the reproduction of inequality.

In the immediate aftermath of the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, an armed struggle ensued in its remote south-eastern corner. The hill people in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, more commonly referred to as paharis, demanded official recognition, and autonomy, as the indigenous people of the Tracts. This demand for autonomy was primarily based on the claim that they were ethnically distinct from the majority ‘Bengali’ population of Bangladesh, and thereby needed to protect their unique identity. This book challenges the general perception within existing scholarship that indigenous claims coming from the Tracts are a recent and contemporary phenomenon, which emerged with the founding of the Bangladesh state. By analysing the processes of colonisation in the Chittagong Hill Tracts, the author argues that identities of distinct ethnicity and tradition predate the creation of Bangladesh, and first began to evolve under British patronage. It is asserted that claims to indigeneity must be understood as an outcome of prolonged and complex processes of interaction between hill peoples – largely the Hill Tracts elites – and the Raj. Using hitherto unexplored archival sources, Indigenous Identity in South Asia sheds new light on how the concepts of ‘territory’, and of a ‘people indigenous to it’ came to be forged and politicised. By showing a far deeper historical lineage of claims making in the Tracts, it adds a new dimension to existing studies on Bangladesh’s borders and its history. The book will also be a key resource for scholars of South Asian history and politics, colonial history and those studying indigenous identity.

This book explores the legal culture of the Parsis, or Zoroastrians, an ethnoreligious community unusually invested in the colonial legal system of British India and Burma. Rather than trying to maintain collective autonomy and integrity by avoiding interaction with the state, the Parsis sank deep into the colonial legal system itself. From the late eighteenth century until India's independence in 1947, they became heavy users of colonial law, acting as lawyers, judges, litigants, lobbyists, and legislators. They de-Anglicized the law that governed them and enshrined in law their own distinctive models of the family and community by two routes: frequent intra-group litigation often managed by Parsi legal professionals in the areas of marriage, inheritance, religious trusts, and libel, and the creation of legislation that would become Parsi personal law. Other South Asian communities also turned to law, but none seems to have done so earlier or in more pronounced ways than the Parsis.

Religious identity constitutes a key element in the formation, development and sustenance of South Asian diasporic communities. Through studies of South Asian communities situated in multiple locales, this book explores the role of religious identity in the social and political organization of the diaspora. It accounts for the factors that underlie the modification of ritual practice in the process of resettlement, and considers how multicultural policies in the adopted state, trans-generational changes and the proliferation of transnational media has impacted the development of these identities in the diaspora. Also crucial is the gender dimension, in terms of how religion and caste affect women’s roles in the South Asian diaspora. What emerges then from the way separate communities in the diaspora negotiate religion are diverse patterns that are strategic and contingent. Yet, paradoxically, the dynamic and evolving relationship between religion and diaspora becomes necessary, even imperative, for sustaining a cohesive collective identity in these communities. This bookw as published as a special issue of South Asian Diaspora.

This book investigates the identity issues of South Asians in the diaspora. It engages the theoretical and methodological debates concerning processes of culture and identity in the contemporary context of globalisation and transnationalism. It analyses the South Asian diaspora - a perfect route to a deeper understanding of contemporary socio-cultural transformations and the way in which information and communication technology functions as both a catalyst and indicator of such transformations. The book will be of interest to scholars of diaspora studies, cultural studies, international migration studies, and ethnic and racial studies. This book is a collection of papers from the journal South Asian Diaspora.

Who is Hindu, who is Muslim? The answer, according to Dominique-Sila Khan, is not as simple as generally assumed. By analyzing documentary sources as well as original field data, she examines the shaping of religious identities in South Asia, particularly in North India. The author argues that the perception of Islam and Hinduism as two monolithic and perpetually antagonistic faiths coexisting uneasily in South Asia has become so deeply ingrained that the complexity of the historical fabric is often overlooked or ignored. She demonstrates how the emergence of clear-cut categories is a comparatively recent phenomenon, and shows how the past is characterized by a remarkable fluidity and diversity in the social and religious milieus of the two faiths. In exploring the historical mechanisms that have led to the emergence and crystallization of religious identities the author sheds light on the increasing number of conflicts which threaten the harmonious co-existence of South Asian communities today.

South Asia is one of the most volatile regions of the world, and India’s complex democratic political system impinges on its relations with its South Asian neighbours. Focusing on this relationship, this book explores the extent to which domestic politics affect a country’s foreign policy. The book argues that particular continuities and disjunctures in Indian foreign policy are linked to the way in which Indian elites articulated Indian identity in response to the needs of domestic politics. The manner in which these state elites conceive India’s region and regional role depends on their need to stay in tune with domestic identity politics. Such exigencies have important implications for Indian foreign policy in South Asia. Analysing India’s foreign policy through the lens of competing domestic visions at three different historical eras in India’s independent history, the book provides a framework for studying India’s developing nationhood on the basis of these idea(s) of ‘India’. This approach allows for a deeper and a more nuanced interpretation of the motives for India’s foreign policy choices than the traditional realist or neo-liberal framework, and provides a useful contribution to South Asian Studies, Politics and International Studies.

How do text, performance, and rhetoric simultaneously reflect and challenge notions of distinct community and religious identities? This volume examines evidence of shared idioms of sanctity within a larger framework of religious nationalism, literary productions, and communalism in South Asia. Contributors to this volume are particularly interested in how alternative forms of belonging and religious imaginations in South Asia are articulated in the light of normative, authoritative, and exclusive claims upon the representation of identities. Building upon new and extensive historiographical and ethnographical data, the book challenges clear-cut categorizations of group identity and points to the complex historical and contemporary relationships between different groups, organizations, in part by investigating the discursive formations that are often subsumed under binary distinctions of dominant/subaltern, Hindu/Muslim or orthodox/heterodox. In this respect, the book offers a theoretical contribution beyond South Asia Studies by highlighting a need for a new interdisciplinary effort in rethinking notions of identity, ethnicity, and religion.