Katharine Adeney (Contributor)
Professor of Politics and Director of the Institute of Asia and Pacific Studies at the University of Nottingham. Area of research: South Asia, particularly India and Pakistan. Tweets @katadeney
Activity
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@Frouhid - ethnic groups may also be majorities e.g. the English are an ethnic group but a majority within Great Britain. I agree with you that different ethnicities can live together, there are many examples of countries where they do so. Unfortunately this doesn't always happen, often due to the politics of power and elites manipulating and stoking tensions.
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Great appreciation that ethnicity does not always have to mean 'minority'. Ethnic groups do not have to be biologically defined, as you say, a belief in the shared identity is sufficient.
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I agree - you've hit the nail head on!
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I would agree, but would amend slightly to say that nationhood and statehood (when borders are drawn around you) are two different things. Sometimes they can be the same e.g. the British nation, if articulated as a civic inclusive identity but they are not always. And there can be many nations within one state e.g. Welsh and Scots and English (and Cornish?) in...
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Completely agree - it's when people try to sweep these issues under the carpet that conflict tends to increase. Because people have multiple identities then recognition and respect can make them less politically salient rather than more. Thanks for watching.
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It is indeed unclear if the massacres could have been avoided, but by unilaterally bringing the timing forward by a year (independence was supposed to have been in 1948) Mountbatten ensured there was no chance of an orderly transition. In his defence, staying on for longer may not have helped much, and hindsight is a wonderful thing (he thought the situation...
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It depends where in India they are. In some areas, such as Gujarat, where Modi used to be chief minister, they were targeted in a pogrom killing up to 2000 of them in 2002. Human Rights Watch concluded the violence was state abetted (although Modi has never been convicted in relation to this). There is evidence that they are being targeted under the Modi...
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It's the same electoral system but certain seats are reserved for Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes so only members of those communities can stand for those seats. But the same electoral system operates in those constituencies, and political parties compete as normal. As an analogy, if the UK decided that (for example) one third of seats should be for...
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Pakistan has approximately 190,290,000 Muslims, India has approximately 165, 670, 000 Muslims.
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@David no, but there are a very large number. Indonesia has the largest number of Muslims, Pakistan is the next largest and then India.
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Excellent point James. I should have kept my comments focused on S Asia rather than encompassing all of Asia. I agree Japan does not fit this model (although its colonialism sparked nationalism against it in its turn). Thanks for spotting this.
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Dear Terry, yes they do, India has universal suffrage. They operate the same simple plurality electoral system as the UK (sometimes called first past the post, although there is in fact no 'post' to pass). Not only do the former untouchables and tribes (called Scheduled Castes and Tribes) have the right to vote, but a certain proportion of seats are reserved...
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Agree completely, we definitely have multiple parts of our identity(ies). Which part is important at any one time depends in part on how threatened we feel (on that part of identity) e.g. I might not feel like my gender identity is important until I am being talked to by a misogynist!
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Dear Richard, yes there was. It is interesting that the Muslim League signed up to such a federal solution (as late as 1946). it was Nehru of India that caused the plan to fail by stating that Congress would not be bound by any agreements made under the British. After independence in a united India, Hindus would have dominated, so this gave the Muslims little...
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Thanks for your comment Norman. I agree there is little difference between European and non European conceptions but nations are not always territorial - depending on how you define a nation. An Islamic nation is not dependent on a particular place. The Jewish nation also exists in many parts of the world (although I accept that Israel is seen to be their...
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Dear Claire - I agree entirely and if I had a longer presentation I would have brought out these facts but chose to concentrate on the better accommodation of linguistic groups in India compared to the Muslims (as an example). The anti Sikh riots after the assassination of Indira Gandhi were appalling and the Congress Party has been heavily implicated in...
