Epic roots: Women, democracy and governance in the Valmiki Rāmāyana
by Swarna Rajagopalan, India
The Rāmāyana is a fine but lasting thread in the South Asian subcontinent’s culture. Associated today with Hinduism, it has over the ages been the inspiration for countless local folk and literary renditions and their recensions, within and outside South Asia, and remains an important source of Indian political metaphors and standards. However, most people, even those who use these metaphors, do so based on an almost-instinctive knowledge of the story. The Rāmāyana has acquired renewed political salience in India in the last two decades, as the Hindutvavadi parties have mobilized support around the Ram Janmabhoomi issue.
This paper is based on a monograph-length study of the Valmiki Rāmāyana, arguably the most influential version of the story extant. It asks the simple ‘what’ questions, and the more complex ‘how’ questions on content and relevance to contemporary Indian politics. What does the Valmiki Rāmāyana tell us about democracy and governance and what space does it afford women in this context? How are these ideas relevant today—both in terms of explaining what is and offering a new way to look at something?
The Valmiki Rāmāyana discusses themes that continue to form the gist of political philosophy: the purposes of political organization, leadership, accountability and political ethics. Women play an important part in the narrative, moving the story forward from one turn to another. However, the lessons that Valmiki may have hoped to teach on the status of women and the lessons that we learn are not altogether identical.
The focus of the 7th Sustainable Development Conference is “Sustainable Development and Governance in the Age of Extremes.” This paper begins to excavate indigenous ideas about governance from a text that is indubitably a part of the whole subcontinent’s civilizational heritage. In so doing, it takes criticisms of reliance on alien epistemologies and constructs to heart, and seeks to chart an alternative path.
Democracy and Conflict: the Communal Dimension
by E. Sridharan, India
This paper focuses on the relationship between democracy and Hindu-Muslim conflict in India. It examines the pattern of representation of Muslims in the Lok Sabha (lower house of parliament) in India’s electoral system in comparative context, finding that while Muslims are systematically underrepresented, more than half of the Muslim MPs are elected from non-Muslim majority constituencies. It also reviews theoretical perspectives and empirical findings on the relationship between representation and communal violence, those of Varshney, Brass, Wilkinson and Khalidi, and concludes that there is no one-on-one relationship between political representation and ethnic violence.
Democracy and Conflict in Pakistan
by Mohammad Waseem, Pakistan
This paper deals with patterns of the unfolding of the idea of democracy in Pakistan at the time of conflict. It focuses on three kinds of dichotomous relations in the country: civil-military conflict; ethnic conflict and the conflict between Islamist and mainstream forces. The aim is to locate the way the nation has been struggling to establish the right to rule and thus identify the supreme source of legitimacy. The constitutional tradition, as inherited from British India, proved to be too weak to thwart the way to military intervention in politics. On the other hand, it is too strong to be dismissed permanently inasmuch as each of the four military governments bowed down to public pressure and held elections on the way to democratization.
Since its inception, Pakistan suffered from problems of permanent majorities and minorities in terms of migrants and locals, Muslims and non-Muslims, as well as the one-province-dominates-all model symbolized first by East Bengal and then Punjab. The more the ruling elite sought to establish Unitarian models of government buttressed by a homogeneous vision of the society, especially under military governments, the more the cultural values of the dominant ethno-linguistic and religious-sectarian groups were identified with the national destiny. The process of Punjabization of the state created politics of exclusion and marginalization within the context of an interface between the ruling set-up in the Centre and sub-national identities of religious minorities, Bengali, Pakhtun, Sindhi, Baluch and more recently Mohajir ethnic communities as well as Shia and other sectarian minorities. In this framework, the paper seeks to inquire into the way the latest phase of democratization in Pakistan from the 2002 elections onwards has reflected tensions between the civil and military wings of the state, privileged and underprivileged ethnic communities and the Islamist and modernist forces.
Gender Quotas and Democracy
by Farzana Bari, Pakistan
The issue of gender quotas was introduced in response to the issue of women's equality in the debate on citizenship and liberal democracy a century ago. The purpose was to address the issue of gender imbalance in governance and politics through the introduction of gender quotas in the world's democracies. Since these quotas have a direct link and bearing upon women's political empowerment, this paper will examine the institution of specific modalities that can lead to such empowerment.
The Garrison State in Pakistan and India post 9/11
by Rehan Ansari, Pakistan
This paper will investigate how post 9/11, the tendencies towards turning into garrison states have been accelerated in the two separate cases of India and Pakistan, and the relationship of the garrison states with civil liberties and the space for dissent. In Pakistan, I have been primarily investigating the US/Pak relationship in the war against terrorism, especially looking at South Waziristan. In India, I have interviewed the lawyers who have been active in the Best Bakery trial (the case around an infamous massacre during the Gujrat riots), the Geelani trial (the Kashmiri Muslim professor of Arabic who was unjustly convicted for the attack on the Indian parliament), as well as the legal challenges to Army rule in the North-East (Assam, Nagaland).
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