Abstract

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.

Stig Toft Madsen has taught and researched in universities in Denmark and Sweden.

Kenneth Bo Nielsen is research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway.

Uwe Skoda is assistant professor of South Asian studies at Aarhus University, Denmark.

A number of chapters […] stand out for their ingenuity and interesting implications for the larger debate. […]The chapters in the second section on ‘India’ are all well-founded and shed light on different aspects of the political process and democratic practices  […] All [the chapters] are well-written and provide interesting insights into selected political practices and processes.' –Marian Gallenkamp, 'Contemporary South Asia'

This volume addresses the current configuration of democratic politics in South Asia from a cross-disciplinary perspective. The essays seek to examine the larger questions of how democratic values are embedded in social and political institutions, and how localised and everyday political values inform the multiple ways in which democracy is understood and practised. One of the strengths of this collection is the fact that it does not seek to provide answers to these questions from within one academic discipline only, but rather brings together scholars with backgrounds in a variety of social science disciplines and the humanities.

A number of allied questions and engaging debates emerge throughout the book. How may we distinguish between democracy’s formal and less-than-formal dimensions in the context of South Asia? How do notions of kinship, kingship and community tie in with larger processes of democratic politics and deepening political mobilisation? How do people construe the political in a context where the sphere of the religious seemingly seamlessly overlaps with the political, where the political cannot be separated from the social, and where the boundaries between state and society are blurred? How do people practically engage with the political and with democratic processes at a local level – and what might democracy mean in the vernacular?