The Dynamics of Conflict and Peace in Contemporary South Asia

This book engages with the concept, true value, and function of democracy in South Asia against the background of real social conditions for the promotion of peaceful development in the region. In the book, the issue of peaceful social development is defined as the conditions under which the maintenance of social order and social development is achieved - not by violent compulsion but through the negotiation of intentions or interests among members of society. The book assesses the issue of peaceful social development and demonstrates that the maintenance of such conditions for long periods is a necessary requirement for the political, economic, and cultural development of a society and state. Chapters argue that, through the post-colonial historical trajectory of South Asia, it has become commonly understood that democracy is the better, if not the best, political system and value for that purpose. Additionally, the book claims that, while democratization and the deepening of democracy have been broadly discussed in the region, the peace that democracy is supposed to promote has been in serious danger, especially in the 21st century. A timely survey and re-evaluation of democracy and peaceful development in South Asia, this book will be of interest to academics in the field of South Asian Studies, Peace and Conflict Studies and Asian Politics and Security.

Minoru Mio is a professor and the director of the Department of Globalization and Humanities at the National Museum of Ethnology, Japan. He is one of the series editors of the Routledge New Horizons in South Asian Studies and has co-edited Cities in South Asia (with Crispin Bates, 2015), Human and International Security in India (with Crispin Bates and Akio Tanabe, 2015) and Rethinking Social Exclusion in India (with Abhijit Dasgupta, 2017), also published by Routledge. Kazuya Nakamizo is a professor in the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. He is the author of Violence and Democracy: The Collapse of One-Party Dominant Rule in India (2020). Tatsuro Fujikura is a professor in the Graduate School of Asian and African Area Studies, and the director of the Center for South Asian Studies at Kyoto University, Japan. He is the author of Discourses of Awareness: Development, Social Movements and the Practices of Freedom in Nepal (2013).

Introduction Part I Democracy, State and Religion 1. Democracy and Vigilantism in India: Spread of Gau Rakshaks 2. Creating Majoritarian Democracy: Bharatiya Janata Party in the 2017 Legislative Assembly Election in Uttar Pradesh 3. Practicing the Right to Indifference: Secularism, Toleration, and Islamophobia in Indian and American National Subjectivities 4. State and Violence in Burma/Myanmar: The Rohingya Crisis and its Implication for South and Southeast Asia Part II Democratization and Social Movements 5. Manifestation of Dalit Rights, Justice and Dalit-ness in the Post-Mandal Era 6. Homogenization of Social Movement Dynamics under a "Clever" Nepali State, 2007-2012 7. Abul Sattar Edhi: The Modern Incarnation of a Pacifist Sufi 8. Movements of flats and citizens: Notes on spatial politics in Mumbai Part III How does a conflict end? 9. Life beyond the paradox: peace, ethnic conflict, and everyday realities of Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh 10. Communities and Mediation in Post-conflict Nepal 11. Maps, Migration, Melancholia