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ID:
097139
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Publication |
2010.
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Summary/Abstract |
The books reviewed here deal with issues that are integral to the global problem of citizenship and its conceptual flow in time and space. Although not explicitly political, they point towards the difficulty of achieving liberal citizenship in illiberal societies where mass mobilization has often led to the decline of modernity and liberal institutions. Is it possible for people whose identities are radically different to share a common space to which they feel morally committed, without having to dissolve their differences? The stories of the rise and fall of 'heartlands' in Uttar Pradesh, struggling Christian minorities in Pakistan, and ownership of the Taj Mahal, a revered and much loved Islamic shrine in a primarily Hindu society, share this question in common. This new research agenda that these books generate has the potential for the construction of an indigenous and hybrid citizenship, and the reconfiguration of power under a different form of institutions and rules with no fixed, narrow, empirical referents, akin to the sense of belonging that visitors to the noble Taj celebrate, even though ever so fleetingly.
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2 |
ID:
135800
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Summary/Abstract |
This article analyses the Kosala movement in western Odisha in the light of a general model of sub-national movements in India. The popular agitation for a separate State has many of the ingredients of similar separatist movements in other parts of India. It draws on sentiments of discrimination and relative deprivation, for which the activists hold politicians from the more advanced coastal districts of Odisha responsible. Supporters of the movement point towards historical records of powerful kingdoms with all the ritual paraphenalia that go into the making of proto-states. Yet, the articulation of a strong sub-regional voice under the leadership of a political party comparable to the TRS in Telengana is absent. Detailed analysis reveals “Kosala identity” to lack cohesion. It is more a politically convenient label than a cohesive core capable of extracting the kind of sacrifice from participants. Finally, there are powerful countervailing, centripetal forces that act against the tendency towards separatism.
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3 |
ID:
057410
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