India Transformed: Parsing India’s “New” Foreign Policy
by Robert M. Hathaway

With the end of the Cold War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the old economic order in India a dozen years ago, the outmoded methods New Delhi had employed for four decades to engage the world were no longer tenable. C. Raja Mohan, one of India’s leading strategic thinkers, has traced the remarkable transformation in New Delhi’s foreign policy during the 1990s in Crossing the Rubicon, a thoughtful new study of the ideas shaping Indian diplomacy. Mohan highlights five changes in the conceptual underpinnings guiding Indian foreign policy since the early 1990s: a shift from domestically focused socialism to a globalized free market economy; a de-emphasis on politics in favor of economics; an abandonment of New Delhi’s earlier infatuation with “Third Worldism” and non-alignment; a rejection of anti-Westernism; and a loss of idealism. These new forces have left India, Mohan contends, with a foreign policy infinitely more suitable for meeting the challenges of the 21st century. New Delhi is now poised, he adds, to break out of the South Asian box in which it has been confined, and assume its rightful place among the world’s leading powers.

The Morality of Communal Politics: Paul Brass, Hindu-Muslim Conflict and the Indian State
by Subrata K. Mitra

This review argues that while Paul Brass’ The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India is well written and meticulously documented, its characterization of Hindu-Muslim violence in India as being in an inexorable downward spiral of increasing severity is flawed. The case study method as employed by Brass, while neatly supporting his thesis, fails to capture the reality of the overall pattern of Hindu-Muslim interaction. This is especially striking in contrast to its implementation to better effect in his earlier work, notably Theft of an Idol. In The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India Brass’ selective case studies fail to convincingly make the transition from the particular to the general, and it lacks the historical depth and theoretical basis to contextualize Hindu nationalism within the greater framework of nationalism across the globe.

India’s Secularism in Comparative Perspective
by Shylashri Shankar

This review assesses whether Gary Jeffrey Jacobson’s The Wheel of Law resolves the two major dilemmas besetting Indian Secularism: first, how to reconcile the paradox of transforming formal equality into substantive equality for groups and individuals while also allowing religious freedom; and, no less importantly, with whom lies final authority for transforming religious practices. This review essay argues that the crisis of secularism, linked intimately with democracy and manifested in the rise of religious majoritarian (Hindu) nationalism, can be resolved only by confronting the question of power – in this case, the authority to alter religious practices.


Social Cleavages and Electoral Competition in India
by Steven L. Wilkinson

Given the great diversity in language, ethnicity, and caste in India, and the resulting millions of possible winning electoral combinations, why is it that in contemporary India we see large state-wide and inter-state political coalitions built around categories such as “Bahujan” or “Backward Caste” instead of thousands of separate caste parties competing at the regional or zila (district) level? This question is the focus of Christophe Jaffrelot’s India’s Silent Revolution: The Rise of the Lower Castes in India, Pradeep Chhibber’s Democracy without Associations: Transformation of the Party System and Social Cleavages in India, and Anirudh Krishna’s Active Social Capital: Tracing the roots of development and democracy. This review assesses how these works address the question of political organization and social cleavages in India, examining the differences in approaches and discussing what still needs to be addressed.