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| 1 |
ID:
135798
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| Summary/Abstract |
This article revisits the early twentieth century to rethink the forces that shaped discourses surrounding political community—specifically the political community in its regional articulation. As we begin to look at the particular ways in which the discourse of rights and political representation have emerged at the regional level in post-independence India, we begin to get a sense of the unique social, cultural, and political dynamics that constitute the region distinct from the dynamics of nationalism and national identity. Specifically, I examine the dynamics of a new discourse of politics in twentieth-century south India, primarily in the Telugu-speaking districts of the Madras Presidency and the princely state of Hyderabad. With the institution of representational bodies/institutions at the regional level, the extension of the franchise and the rise of a public politics based on liberal ideas of public reason, and debate at the turn of the twentieth century, we witness the emergence of the region as the site of a distinct set of political dynamics.
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| 2 |
ID:
135797
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| Summary/Abstract |
Conventional views of regions and regionalism begin with geography, history, language or other categories of organization. In this article, I offer a new(?) concept: the colonial region and its concomitant sentiment of colonial regionalism. The colonial region is one formed under colonial rule to suit administrative needs. It may directly encompass some form of pre-existing region, or it may cobble together a variety of smaller areas—some perhaps regions of their own, others not—into one greater region. A colonial region is thus an artificial one, not necessarily taking into account local realities. Many of the presidencies, provinces, and princely states might thus be considered as forms of colonial regions. Such regions often have long lives, and over time, inhabitants within a colonial region come to take on a sense of identity and pride in that region. This article examines colonial regionalism in the Madras Presidency along the axes of pride in physical and human assets.
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| 3 |
ID:
135796
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| Summary/Abstract |
This introduction outlines some major ways in which regions and regionalism have been defined. It provides a brief overview of the contents of this special edition of India Review.
From India’s colonial period to the present, administrators, scholars, and pundits alike have prophesized India’s breakup and demise. They had some reason for concern, given the widely recognized diversity of India’s geography in addition to its linguistic, economic, religious, and ethnic communities. Many of these communities have found voice, and even success, in regional movements that have led to the creation of new states and the redrawing of India’s map. The reality is that India’s democratic framework and its ability to accommodate most of these demands demonstrates a fundamental resiliency.
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| 4 |
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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| 5 |
ID:
135799
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| Summary/Abstract |
The leading industrial state in India, Maharashtra, is widely seen as a region with a cohesive political identity. My article focuses on the complex, shifting collective memories of Maratha history centered on the heroic figure of the seventeenth-century warrior-king Shivaji Bhosale, and the role they have played in the fabrication/fragmentation of regional identity. The first section charts the historical discourses anchored in various perceptions of caste, class, religion, and nation, which contributed to the emergence of a seemingly consensual construct of Shivaji as a key axis of regional identity. The second delves into the state’s cultural politics during the last five decades and highlights certain dramatic episodes that were triggered by supposed slights to the hallowed memory of the Maratha king. The third section provides an analysis of these episodes and reveals the contested character of regional identity in contemporary Maharashtra, which is driven by deep-seated antagonism between different communities.
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| 6 |
ID:
135802
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| Summary/Abstract |
The central argument of the article is that West Bengal’s regionalism is a two level game. The state’s predominant regionalism is financial, set in antagonistic terms vis-à-vis the Centre. This financial or economic regionalism is paradigmatic to West Bengal. The tragedy of Partition; exceptional sensitivity to any prospect of further loss of territory; a sense of betrayal and helplessness; blaming others rather than engaging in critical introspection about its secular decline as a front ranking industrial state; and the political dominance of the middle class espousing a so called “bhadralok” identity are pivotal factors in explaining the relentless dynamics of West Bengal’s financial regionalism, regardless of the party in power. West Bengal has constructed a sub-textual identity raised on soft Bengali nationalism bereft of overt and exclusivist cultural markers.
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| 7 |
ID:
135801
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| Summary/Abstract |
The democratic institutions face the challenge of having to address regional demands without being pulled and swept away by them. While at one level the State prefers to distance itself from conceding to regional demands, at another, large parts of the Northeast get regionally reorganized and configured without the State having done it — through the use of wanton violence mostly by non-State actors—a phenomenon we describe as “virtual regionalism”. As the new developmental initiatives undertaken since the 1990s start being perceived as a threat to people’s lives and their very existence, ethnic and regional demands are increasingly giving way to a concern for home, for life, and the imperative necessity of shared existence with neighbors who are not necessarily the members of the same ethnicity.
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