Book Review: Arjun Guneratne and Anita M. Weiss (eds),Pathways to Power: The Domestic Politics of South Asia

Arjun Guneratne and Anita M. Weiss seek to provide scholars, students and dilettantes alike with the building blocks for a comparative conversation on the politics of South Asia. Specifically, through stand-alone chapters that provide a concise yet comprehensive overview of the political, economic and social trajectories of five countries in the region, they provide a digestible yet expansive text for undergraduate education. This will no doubt ease the burden of instructors who often must piece together disparate sources, particularly when it comes to Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh. What’s more, this volume brings over half a dozen experts on the region—ShabnumTejani (with a chapter on ‘The Colonial Legacy’), Christophe Jaffrelot (India), Pratyoush Onta and Seira Tamang (Nepal), Haroun Er Rashid (Bangladesh) and the editors (Guneratne on Sri Lanka, Weiss on Pakistan)—to explore similar phenomena in their respective countries. This provides the ingredients for a comparative dialogue; however, they leave the cooking for the classroom.

Guneratne and Weiss organize their volume around four broad themes: political histories; identity politics; the struggle over the rights of subaltern groups and women’s rights; and the costs of militarism within and across countries. Along with careful description, the goals they set for the book are to explore how history, identity politics, cultural values, political economy and security interact within countries and to make thematic comparisons across countries.

As a textbook on South Asia, the most basic objective is to give students the descriptive background they need on the political, social and economic trajectories these countries have followed. To this end, each chapter synthesizes critical moments in each country’s political trajectory, ethnic and religious politics, and the most serious challenges they faced, in terms of pluralism, violence and equality. The volume improves upon existing texts in several ways. First, the authors pay careful attention to organizing their discussions of historical events into critical moments and their implications. For example, Christophe Jaffrelot couches his overview of India’s changing dynamics of partisan competition into the broader social forces that underlie these changes from Hindu nationalism to lower caste movements. Second, the volume’s discussion of political economy and the struggle for equal rights highlights the serious obstacles and contradictions these countries face for delivering growth and inclusive development in a context of diversity with clarity. Third, and particularly important, the authors go out of their way to highlight heterogeneity within the five countries under study. For example, to push against a monolithic view of Pakistani politics and society, Weiss draws important contrasts across provinces to show diversity in the character of ethnic politics in Pakistan. In short, each chapter can stand alone as a broad overview of a particular country.

This book will also be a valuable resource for readers looking to contextualize recent events in South Asia from the violent end of the civil war in Sri Lanka to the debate over the constitution in Nepal or resurgence of militant Hindu nationalism in India. For example, Arjun Guneratne’s chapter on Sri Lanka illustrates the set of political decisions that brought Sri Lanka to civil war through a process of increasing authoritarianism and ethnic marginalization. The legacy of majoritarianism in Sri Lanka outlined in this chapter, along with the economic damage that went with it, presents a critical obstacle for democracy and peace today. Similarly, Pratyoush Onta and Seira Tamang’s chapter on Nepal outlines the trajectory of political and class conflict that came to the fore in the media coverage of a controversial new constitution that was passed this year.

That said, this volume’s strength in careful description comes with disadvantages in terms of analytical goals laid out by the editors in the introduction: ‘[This volume] reveals the interplay between politics, cultural values, human security, and historical luck’ (p. 1). For example, it is effective when it comes to exploring the evolution of the women’s movement or the form that the politicization of religion took in each country. However, less attention is invested towards explaining the role that culture or historical legacies played in these outcomes. For better or worse, readers are left to decide for themselves the analytic lens through which to understand these political trajectories.

Similarly, the editors make a strong case for analytically grouping these five countries together and exploring the different trajectories they have taken in terms of ethnic politics, colonial legacies and so on. Nonetheless, the volume makes less progress than it could in exploring comparative questions to explain differences across countries. Shabnum Tajani’s chapter takes a valuable step in this direction by exploring the diversity of colonial legacies across South Asia. This chapter sets the agenda for a critical discussion on how the legacy of varied British institutions and British policies towards nationalist movements shaped variation in the form democracy and economic development took after independence. Although the remaining country chapters are organized around core themes, this volume does not make a point of exploring fundamental comparative questions. For example, why did Hindu–Muslim and language conflict in India not go the way of Tamil–Sinhalese conflict in Sri Lanka? What explains variation in the form that ethnic and religious nationalism took across these countries? How much of this variation is rooted in the colonial experience rather than the skill and policies of politicians across these countries? A concluding chapter that asks comparative questions such as these for each of the book’s core themes would have been valuable for fulfilling the editors’ goal of engaging in a comparative conversation on South Asia as a whole. Of course, the contributors provide us with the ingredients for a comparative dialogue through the many rich chapters in this volume. Perhaps, the choice to avoid comparative questions is wise, given the diversity of disciplinary tastes among South Asianists who will benefit from this book.

In summary, this book makes important strides as a comprehensive text on South Asia. It synthesizes complex political, economic and social trajectories in a wide range of countries to an extent not seen in comparable volumes. That said, the volume saves the big analytic questions for others to address.