With numerous incidents of what the RSS offshoot, the Dharm Jagran Samanvay Samiti calls ‘ghar wapsi’, (250 Muslim families being reconverted to Hinduism in Agra in November, 2014, and 40 Mazhabi Sikh families who had embraced Christianity being reconverted to Sikhism in Amritsar in December 2014),
In Muslim Politics in Bihar, Mohammad Sajjad, an assistant professor of history at Aligarh Muslim University, breaks new ground in a number of ways.
Amongst the regional organizations, SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, has not attracted much scholarly attention.
Capitalism is cruel. Yet, for a poor, economically backward country, an evil necessity. The spread of capitalist development promises prosperity with malls, multiplexes and condominiums but its underside can be grotesquely ugly.
A day after the winter session of parliament ended in December 2014, the National Democratic Alliance (II) Government promulgated two ordinances aimed at taking forward economic reforms in the insurance and coal sectors arguing that ‘the country can no longer wait’.
For any observer of politics in South Asia, there is always a question waiting to be answered. What explains the enthusiastic participation of the electorates in the ‘new’ democracies/semi-democracies of South Asia (whenever they get an opportunity!) remains a puzzle for them. Why elections are such grand spectacles bringing a festive spirit among the masses is intriguing for an impressed westerner as she assesses the ground reality.