The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India
Political Leadership and Ethnonationalist Movements
- Jugdep S Chima - Associate Editor for South Asia, Asian Survey, University of California, Berkeley
The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India: Political Leadership and Ethnonationalist Movements provides an authoritative political history of the Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab by focussing on "patterns of political leadership", a previously unexplored explanatory variable. It describes in detail the trends which led to the emergence of the "Punjab crisis", the various dynamics through which the movement sustained itself and the changing nature of "patterns of political leadership" which eventually resulted in its decline in the mid-1990s.
Providing a microhistorical analysis of the "Punjab crisis," this book argues that the trajectories of ethnonationalist movements are largely determined by the interaction between self-interested ethnic and state political elites, who not only react to the structural choices they face, but whose purposeful actions and decisions ultimately affect the course of ethnic group—state relations. It consolidates this theoretical preposition through a comparative analysis of four contemporary global ethnonationalist movements—those occurring in Chechnya, Northern Ireland, Kashmir, and Assam.
This book will be of interest to students and academics studying political science and history, especially those working on South Asia and the Sikhs, and also for public policy practitioners in multi-ethnic societies. It remains invaluable reading for those interested in the phenomenon of ethnonationalism.
The book is a diligent, dense narrative of the insurgency in India’s state of Punjab from 1970 to the 1990s…The book provides a valuable compilation of details about the Punjab insurgency – a narrative that goes year by year and almost month by month at some junctures.
The book throws light on the political history of the Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab by focusing on "patterns of political leadership", the trends which led to the emergence of the `Punjab crisis`, the various dynamics through which the movement sustained itself and the changing nature of "patterns of political leadership" which led to its decline in the mid-1990`s.
It is an important resource on the state of Punjab and the journey that it has emerged out of. The work has to be read as carefully as it has been written.
Jugdep S Chima`s The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India addresses not only this turning point, but encompasses, within its 315 pages, a commendable account of the rise, sustenance and decline of the Sikh quest for an independent state. It should be useful reading for public policymakers and the intelligence community. The book is the story of a model province`s dramatic transformation into a hotbed of an ethno-nationalist movement and its mutation into an armed secessionist uprising for the creation of an independent Sikh state.
