Books in the Routledge Advances in South Asian Studies series

This book studies a historical interaction between the city and the natural environment from the colonial to the contemporary era in South Asia. It will be of interest to researchers in the field of South Asian Studies, world history and environmental history.

This book offers a critical analysis of radicalization in Pakistan by deconstructing the global and the official state narratives designed to restrain Pakistani radicalization.

This book analyses problems of governance, development and environment affecting contemporary Pakistan; issues that lie at the centre of federal and provincial policy deliberations, formulation and implementation.

Based on the author's thesis (doctoral--Princeton University, 2007) under the title, Do local governments matter?

Provides a comprehensive study of Bengali Islam. Focusing on the Maijbhandari movement, which claims the status of the only Sufi order originated in Bengal and which has gained immense popularity, this book presents a comprehensive picture of contemporary Bengali Islam in the South Asian context.

Deals with the controversies on developmental aspects of large dams with a particular focus on the Narmada case in India. This book shows how local demands for resettlement and rehabilitation were transformed into a radical anti-dam campaign linked to national and transnational movement networks.

Examines how India has been able to sustain democratic governance while undergoing substantial social, economic and political changes through a neo-institutional rational choice model of governance, bounded by local culture and context.

Presenting a framework that incorporates macro-level forces into micro-level strategic calculations, this book explains key political choices by leaders and challengers in Pakistan through the political survival mechanism. It offers an explanation for continuing polity weakness in the country.

Most studies on nations and nationalism argue that history, or more precisely a 'common past', is crucial for the process of national identity building. This book focuses on the construction, elaboration and negotiation of the narratives that have become official history in India.

Presents and analyses the sub-national war of postcolonial South Asia, between the Indian state and the Nagas of Northeast India. This book offers a political history on the Naga region over three periods, pre-colonial, colonial, and post-colonial. It is suitable for students and scholars of politics, history, anthropology and South Asian studies.

Examines the Tibetan government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). Based on empirical studies in India and Nepal, this book discusses the political strategies of the CTA to gain national loyalty and international support to secure its own organizational survival and to reach its ultimate goal: returning to Tibet.

Provides a systematic exploration of party system change. By applying the concept of political entrepreneurship and using a detailed case study of the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu, this book demonstrates how party leaders can exercise their agency and drive party system change.

This book provides a detailed examination of the compound crisis between India and Pakistan that brought the region to the brink of a nuclear war in 1990 and places the crisis in the context of concurrent international events.

Parliaments or legislatures are the keystone of democratic governance and they are critical in securing government accountability. This book presents a comparative analysis of the role of parliamentary committees in securing government accountability in the three largest and most important functioning democracies in South Asia: Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. The author compares the nascent democracy of Bangladesh with the stable and vibrant democratic system of India since its independence from the British in 1947 and Sri Lanka's longstanding and established democracy. He argues that in each country, parliament has been able to survive and perform the key parliamentary tasks of representation, legislation, oversight of the executive, conflict resolution and regime maintenance; concluding that parliamentary committees in Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka do not perform as successfully as their counterparts in the Western world in controlling the government and holding it to account; however, their role in securing government accountability is not irrelevant. Parliamentary Control and Government Accountability in South Asia will be a useful reference for studying third world parliaments in particular.