Contributed articles presented at the Seminar on Ethnic Issues, Secularism, and Conflict Resolution in North-East India held at Shillong during 25-26 April, 2001.

The book is a very detailed work on the relationship between movements for autonomy by indigenous peoples (the so-called ‘tribes’) and violence in Assam, in northeast India. The book addresses some of the reasons for the failure of ethnic conflict management and for the frequent emergence of violence in the region. In particular, the historical description of movements by the Dimasas, Misings and Bodos is well compiled and provides a good summary for the readers. At the same time, the work offers a good understanding of ethnic violence in contemporary India. The volume offers some new research data based on comparative analysis of different trajectories followed by three important movements among Assam’s ethnic minorities. While the pieces of the argument are based on the existing literature on ethnic violence and contentious politics, they are effectively connected to materials drawn from northeast India. Furthermore, the book raises significant concerns on the debates on crafting of decentralised institutions and executive opportunities that may facilitate ethnic accommodation thereby reducing the likelihood of such groups to pursue their goals through channels that are radical or extreme.

The media has a close relationship with socio-cultural and political systems in today’s society. This relationship both offers the potential to tackle the various challenges associated with inequality and, at the same time, creates a nexus with the elite classes of society to keep the marginalized away from the mainstream. This complex relationship between the media, state and the marginalized becomes more complex and interesting in the Indian context, where we find diversity not only in groups and communities, but also in power-relations. This book, containing twenty-one chapters and an editorial introduction, thus, deals with Indian perspectives in relation to the media, the state and the marginalized sections of society. This book will be of interest to academics, scholars and students of social sciences, especially in the fields of media studies, political science and sociology. It will also be useful for the people working in the media industry.

Insurgency in India’s Northeast provides a systematic analysis of every major secessionist group and insurgency in the region within a unified and original explanatory framework, focusing primarily on the postcolonial period. This book presents a parsimonious analytic narrative involving a rich sequential account of the historical evolution of Mizo, Naga, Meitei, and "ethnic Assamese" identities from precolonial to colonial to postcolonial times. Avoiding essentialist or primordialist arguments, the chapters in the book demonstrate how ethnic/(sub)national identities are dynamic and malleable phenomenon, not immutable natural givens. In particular, it argues that the postcolonial Indian state has attempted to integrate these ethnic/sub-state national groups into the Indian Union through a combination of democratic accommodation/consociationalism and hegemonic/violent control, strategically designed to encapsulate their evolving (sub) national identities into the overarching state-sponsored Indian nationality. Through this book, readers will gain a rich understanding of the dynamics of ethnicity/ nationality and the nation/state-building process in postcolonial India. It will be of interest to researchers in the fields of Asian studies, ethnicity, nationalism, separatism, security studies, border studies, and international relations.

The classic study of post-Cold War international relations, more relevant than ever in the post-9/11 world, with a new foreword by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Since its initial publication, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order has become a classic work of international relations and one of the most influential books ever written about foreign affairs. An insightful and powerful analysis of the forces driving global politics, it is as indispensable to our understanding of American foreign policy today as the day it was published. As former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski says in his new foreword to the book, it “has earned a place on the shelf of only about a dozen or so truly enduring works that provide the quintessential insights necessary for a broad understanding of world affairs in our time.” Samuel Huntington explains how clashes between civilizations are the greatest threat to world peace but also how an international order based on civilizations is the best safeguard against war. Events since the publication of the book have proved the wisdom of that analysis. The 9/11 attacks and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have demonstrated the threat of civilizations but have also shown how vital international cross-civilization cooperation is to restoring peace. As ideological distinctions among nations have been replaced by cultural differences, world politics has been reconfigured. Across the globe, new conflicts—and new cooperation—have replaced the old order of the Cold War era. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order explains how the population explosion in Muslim countries and the economic rise of East Asia are changing global politics. These developments challenge Western dominance, promote opposition to supposedly “universal” Western ideals, and intensify intercivilization conflict over such issues as nuclear proliferation, immigration, human rights, and democracy. The Muslim population surge has led to many small wars throughout Eurasia, and the rise of China could lead to a global war of civilizations. Huntington offers a strategy for the West to preserve its unique culture and emphasizes the need for people everywhere to learn to coexist in a complex, multipolar, muliticivilizational world.

The art of successful negotiations over protracted conflicts presupposes a political commitment to peace and a willingness to compromise, which are sorely lacking in the current disorderly world. Part of the blame for this lies in weak and ineffective national and global leadership. This book’s sharp focus on the role of leadership at different levels—national government, rebel and Western/regional government mediators—as well as that of the UN and non-governmental players in settling intra-state disputes, is a unique feature which sets it apart from others. Much of the existing literature does not adequately discuss the role of the above actors in developing countries. Asia’s Trouble Spots is a serious attempt to fill this gap. The seven country studies in Asia—Myanmar, Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Sri Lanka, India and China—discuss, inter alia, how peace negotiations between national political and rebel leaders have unfolded. The role of state-sponsored cross-border terrorists and non-state spoilers such as Al-Qaeda and ISIS is addressed in the context of geopolitical rivalry among regional and global powers. A. S. Bhalla challenges the view that Western leaders can act as impartial mediators in intra-state and inter-state disputes. With few exceptions, their record has been dismal at best. Their failure in conflict resolution arises from a loss of moral authority and credibility, which follows the gradual erosion over the years of such liberal values as the rule of law and respect for democracy and human rights. Commercial and strategic self-interests have also tended to undermine peacebuilding efforts.

This study examines the enormous variation and complexity that characterize relationships between the national state and locally-based, often non-state actors who negotiate and compete for political authority in Burma’s ethnic minority-dominated states along the borders. Three patterns of relationships are explored: devolution by the national state to warlord-like local authorities; occupation by the Burmese military; and coexistence (with varying degrees of cooperation and understanding) among actors from the national state and local stakeholders. Throughout these border states, leaders of the Burmese government’s armed forces and of past and currently-active armed opposition forces operate within a context that is neither war nor peace, but instead a kind of post-civil-war, not-quite-peace environment. To understand the complex political arrangements that have arisen in this environment, this monograph employs the concept of “emerging political complex” — a set of adaptive networks that link state and other political authorities to domestic and foreign business concerns (some legal, others illegal), traditional indigenous leaders, religious authorities, overseas refugee and diaspora communities, political party leaders, and nongovernmental organizations. All of these players make rules, extract resources, provide protection, and try to order a moral universe, but none of them are able, or even inclined, to trump the others for monolithic national supremacy. Conflict resolution strategies have to recognize that these emerging political complexes are not simply unfortunate bumps in the road to peace but instead constitute intricate and evolving social systems that may continue to be adapted and sustained.