Abstract
Since the 1980s, it has become increasingly evident that India is faced with far greater danger to her security from conflicts within her borders than from conflicts with hostile powers beyond her border. On the other hand, the steady expansion in indigenous weapons production and the acquisition of sophisticated arms from abroad has made India the most powerful country, far outstripping other smaller states in the region. Yet, the events during the decade of the 1980s suggest that India’s growing superiority in arms has not countered her sense of growing vulnerability.
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NOTES
See Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph. ‘Subcontinental Empire and the Regional Kingdom in Indian State Formation’, in Paul Wallace (ed.), Region and Nation in India (New Delhi: Oxford and IBH, 1985); also, see their In the Pursuit of Laxmi (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1987) pp. 61–8.
H. N. Sinha, The Development of Indian Polity (Bombay: Asian Publishing House, 1962) pp. 239–76, 342–84, 507–54.
For a discussion of the Maurya, Gupta and Harshvardhana empires see Charles Drekmeier, Kingship and Community in Early India (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 1966) pp. 165–88.
Ramila Thapar, A History of India, vol. i (London: Penguin, 1966) pp. 86–96.
For a summary of the imperial ideas as revived by the Mughals, see Percival Spear, ‘The Mughals and the British’, in A. L. Basham (ed.), A Cultural History of India (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1975). Also, see Pamela Price, ‘Kingly Models in Indian Political Behavior’, Asian Survey, xxix, no. 6 (June 1989).
Percival Spear, ‘The British and the Indian State to 1930’, in R. J. Moore (ed.), Tradition and Politics in South Asia (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1977) p. 168–9.
Singh Ragubir, Indian States and the New Regime (Bombay: Taraporewala, 1938) p. 22.
Rajiv Kapoor, Sikh Separatism (London: Allen and Unwin, 1986) pp. 71–3.
Lloyd and Susanne Rudolph,’ subcontinental Empire and the Regional Kingdom in Indian State Fotmation’, p. 51; also, see Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) pp. 152–4.
Ainslee Embree, Intagining India: Essays on Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989) p. 72. Lord Curzon widened the British sphere of influence by extending the British Empire to Tibet, Afghanistan and Nepal. See Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India, p. 171.
Although for the sake of simplicity only two strains of nationalism are identified here, in reality several lesser strains could be identified. The Hindu nationalist ideas were set forth by Savarkar in his treatise on Hindutya which talks about the ancient origins and unity of the Hindu nation. Rajgopalachari represented the intellectual and spiritual strains of Hindu nationalism. Patel. Tandon and Bipin Pal were more politically oriented and rejected Nehru’s Westernised, secular nationalism. For a discussion, see Sankar Ghose, Political Ideas and Movements in India (Bombay: Allied Publishers, 1975) pp. 171–84.
The loose federation was conceived in order to allow widest possible freedom to the Muslim-majority provinces in the undivided India. Once the separation of India and Pakistan occurred, the raison d’être of this weak federation vanished. Now it was federal form with unitary spirit, a strong, centralised structure and wide powers in the provinces. See Pannikar, The Foundation of New India (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1963) p. 154.
Rajni Kothari, Politics in India (Boston, Mass.: Little Brown, 1970) p. 115.
Selig Harrison, India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1960). There are several studies focusing on the ethnic-linguistic disunity in India, see Myron Weiner (ed.), State Politics in India (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1976)
Paul Brass, Factional Politics in an Indian State: The Congress Party of Uttar Pradesh (Berkeley, Cal.: California University Press, 1966).
Surjeet Mansingh, India’s Search far Power (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1984) p. 213.
Paul Brass, The Politics of India Since Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 39–40.
For the discussion of Mrs Gandhi’s move toward the centralisation and the personalisation of power, see Stanley Kochanek, ‘Mrs Gandhi’s Pyramid: the New Congress’, in Henry Hart (ed.), Indira Gandhi’s India: A Political System Reappraisal (Boulder, Col.: Westview, 1976) pp. 93–124
Jyotirindra Das Gupta, ‘The Janata Phase: Reorganization and Redirection in Indian Politics’, Asian Survey, xix, no. 4 (August 1979) pp. 390–403.
For an interesting discussion of India’s shift from Nehru’s internationalism to Mrs Gandhi’s regionalism, see Ashok Kapur, ‘The Indian Subcontinent: The Contemporary Structure of Power and the Development of Power Relations’, Asian Survey, xxviii, no. 7 (July 1988) pp. 705–10.
Leo Rose asserts that India aims at establishing a hegemony in South Asia. See ‘Hegemony in South Asia’, in J. N. Rosenau, et al. (eds), World Politics (New York: Free Press, 1976) p. 214. Also, see Ross Munro, ‘The Awakening of an Asian Power’, Time, 3 April, 1989.
Robert Hardgrave and Stanley Kochanek, India: Government and Politics in a Developing Nation (San Diego: Harcourt Brace and Janovich, 1986) p. 224.
For a first-hand account of events that eventually led to the assault on the Golden Temple, see Mark Tully and Satish Jacob, Amritsar: Mrs Gandhi’s Last Battle (London: Rupa, 1985) pp. 107–74.
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© 1993 Hafeez Malik
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Chadda, M. (1993). From an Empire State to a Nation State: the Impact of Ethno-Religious Conflicts on India’s Foreign Policy. In: Malik, H. (eds) Dilemmas of National Security and Cooperation in India and Pakistan. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22674-0_10
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