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South Asia Study Centre (SASC) has the objective of executing research programmes focusing on national, ethnic, religious and minority questions in South Asia. Related issues of caste and gender, and the rights of the indigenous peoples are also taken up for analysis.  

South Asia has a complex natural, national-ethnic, cultural-linguistic, religious and racial history, and exhibits varying relations and levels of production. The countries and their boundaries—as they currently exist—are to a large extent a legacy of British colonial overlordship. Political independence towards the middle of the 20th century did not result in genuine political and economic independence for the different national formations. Rather, political power was concentrated in centralized, militarist/fundamentalist, war-mongering, jingoist, revivalist states, making the region into a cauldron of diverse conflicts and movements rooted in dynamic objective realities.  

In the absence of a genuine federal structure in any of the South Asian countries so far, the various nationalities are bonded to centralized state structures, which are dominated by the monopoly and bureaucrat bourgeoisies closely linked to metropolitan capital. Centralisation and concentration of economic and political power is the trend.  

Imbalances in the ‘growth’ of various regions and sub-regions, and increasing internal inequalities between social groups and regions in the contemporary context are very much linked to the accumulation drive of international capital. Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) and the subsequent globalisation process have accentuated the uneven development between the advanced capitalist and neocolonial countries as well as within these countries, leading to a polarization of wealth on the one hand, and destitution and deprivation on the other, whereby the environment is also getting irreparably damaged.  

The elites or dominant sections within the different South Asian countries have evolved their specific religious biases and national-ethnic compositions.  For example, in India, a big chunk is Hindu revivalist and Hindu chauvinistic; in Sri Lanka the Sinhala Buddhist sections dominate and in Pakistan, it is the Punjabi Muslims.  

The nuclear arms race, the persecution of religious minorities and the fanning of communal tensions, the enacting of draconian laws and the consequent fascisisation of the polity are the crisis management methods of the ruling classes unable to resolve the basic issues of peoples’ livelihoods, right to a life of dignity for all, and the self-determination of nationalities.  

The neocolonial strategy of ‘develop and control’, with its concomitant manipulation of the market mechanism, is acting as the significant objective base for the eruption of nationality based movements, and for movements challenging caste based and sex based discrimination and for human rights, environmental protection, sustainable and organic agriculture and for land and livelihood for the indigenous peoples.  

During the 1950s and 1960s, the national aspirations of the different peoples of the Indian subcontinent were manifested in the demand for linguistic rights and States. But since the 1970s, the aspirations of various national, sub-national and ethnic groupings have taken qualitatively different forms. These movements are demanding control over their natural resources, protection of their indigenous cultural identities, ways of life and biodiversity, political self-determination rights and in some cases even independence. They have become the key political factor in the subcontinent.  

With the aggravation of national, regional and urban-rural disparities, the 21st century is witnessing further escalation of these crucial questions. National, regional movements that had  assumed well-defined economic content and confrontationist political forms and were threatening to break up the framework of states as they presently exist towards the end of the last century have been beaten down but continue to simmer. Often such movements were led down the path of inter-ethnic and inter-religious bloodbaths and genocides. This trend is obvious in India and the rest of South Asia.

Exploration of the roots of ethnic and caste based conflicts and violence, the role of religion in nation formation and assertion, and understanding the issues of caste-based and women’s oppression are essential for the development of a democratic polity. The driving principle of the South Asia Study Centre is to throw light on this complex web of socio-political and economic factors that are presently determining the course of events in South Asia.  

T.G. Jacob

Pranjali Bandhu