This book is the second in the series of annual publications which will cover conflicts in South Asia. This is an admirable effort and as things stand the series is likely to continue for years to come.
To see a book on maritime security produced outside Delhi, in the coastal city of Chennai, is a happy occurrence. Produced by the Centre for Security Analyses (CSA) it is the product of a seminar conducted in Chennai with funding from the Hans Seidel Foundation, Munich.
This book is a result of a seminar organized by the Delhi Policy Group in November 22-23, 2007 in New Delhi. In January 2007 the Delhi Policy Group initiated a research project titled, ‘Asian Security Dynamics’ to study the dynamics of the strategic relations between Japan and the United States in the changing environment in Asia mainly due to the ‘rise’ of China and India.
In August 2008, Pervez Musharraf resigned as the President of Pakistan. The US reaction has been one of muted praise for his role in the war against terrorism, even as it could do little to shore up his failing acceptability in the Pakistani polity.
Khanna’s ambitious volume, freighted with a 23-page bibliography and 64 pages of substantive notes is, at first glance, highly ambitious. Endearingly, it also contains a very lengthy list of exceptionally enthusiastic acknowledgments—not all of them recognizing only the prominent and world-famous.
The three volumes, Explaining Indian Democracy, bring together the research publications of Lloyd Rudolph and Susanne Rudolph over a period of fifty years. These essays are the product of a highly fruitful intellectual collaboration between two prominent scholars who are also wife and husband, which is rare in any profession.