Conflicting Claims In Democratizing India
Ashutosh Kumar
HANDBOOK OF POLITICS IN INDIAN STATES: REGIONS, PARTIES, AND ECONOMIC REFORMS by Sudha Pai Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2014, 443 pp., 1495
March 2014, volume 38, No 3

The last three decades have witnessed the onset of the processes that have resulted in a significant shift in the nature of India’s politics and economy. Among these processes, the most significant one has been the assertion of identity politics. Increasingly democratizing India has experienced a sharp rise in the conflicting claims of different ethnic categories, and of struggles amongst them, often fought out on lines of region, religion, language (even dialect), caste, kinship and community.

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