South Asia in and After the 1980s

Contemporary South Asia can be explained in four major ways. First, South Asia is one of the most militarily tensed regions of the world. The region has two nuclear arch-rivals—India and Pakistan—who have fought four wars (1947–1948, 1965, 1971 and 1999), engaged in militarily tense situations (1987, 2001–2002, 2008, 2016 and 2019) and, after the revocation of the Special Status of the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution in August 2019, they have downgraded diplomatic missions at each other’s capitals. Then, India’s political tensions and skirmishes at the border with China, an extra-regional power with a geographical spread and political influence in South Asia, have increased in the last few years. Indian and Chinese armies were in a stand-off situation for 73 days at the Doklam trijunction in Bhutan in 2017. Three years later, in 2020, the armies from two countries clashed at Galwan Valley in which 20 Indian and 4 Chinese soldiers died. In addition to inter-state tensions and intermittent clashes on the border, a part of South Asia is infested with terrorism, militancy insurgency and identity-based tensions. Second, majoritarianism, populist politics, shrinking space for democratic dissent, patriarchal social structure and colossal economic inequality broadly characterize the politics and societies of the respective South Asian countries. Third, notwithstanding the huge economic inequality, South Asia is a big market for the global economy. India's economic strength and capability are continuously rising. India is the fifth-largest economy in the world and is expected to occupy the third spot by 2030. Bangladesh has transformed itself from a ‘basket case’ in 1971 into an economic model for many smaller countries. Conversely, Pakistan and Sri Lanka are in severe economic trouble. Finally, the South Asian identity and regional self-consciousness are largely missing. Despite having a shared history, religious and ethnic similarities and same cultural background, sharp differences exist between India and some of its neighbouring countries.

Although many of the aforementioned problems existed since the region was decolonized in the late 1940s, contemporary issues are largely linked to political developments in the 1980s. It was the last decade of the Cold War (1947–1991) between the United States of America (USA)-led Western Bloc and the Soviet Union led Eastern Bloc. Developments in global politics, fierce military tensions between the two blocs and a decline in the economic condition of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s ended the Cold War and changed the world order from bipolar to unipolar. During the 1980s, there was a sharp rise in identity politics that caused conflicts between different groups. Religion was used by the promoters of the liberal capitalist order as a potent weapon to fight against the atheist communist states and communism at home. While doing so, a radical version of religion was promoted, turning many followers into extremist fighter for the cause of their confession. The cases of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh are mentioned below. The 1980s was also a decade when many countries from the global south found themselves in an economically difficult condition or began to land in such a situation as their welfare-based economies reached an inflection point, witnessing the decline. To assuage their economic difficulties, many countries from the global south adopted the World Bank and International Monetary Fund-guided Structural Adjustment Programme. One such country was India, which faced challenging economic conditions in the late 1980s, forcing New Delhi to adopt a new economic policy in 1991.

To fight against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, Islam was weaponized by the Western bloc countries and their supporters. A large number of Muslim youths from different parts of the world were indoctrinated with radical versions of Islam and recruited to fight against the Soviet invaders. After the war ended, many of the radicalized youths became rudderless. In Afghanistan, Taliban was formed in Kandhar in September 1994 to promote staunch Islamic values in the country. Gradually, the country became a den of militancy. On 11 September 2001, Afghanistan-based militants carried out an attack in the USA. The 9/11 attack on US soil was followed by an attack on Afghanistan by the USA and its allies. The United Nations Security Council Resolution Number 1386 set up the International Security Assistance Force pursuant to the Bonn Agreement. After 20 years of fighting in Afghanistan, the USA and allied forces ultimately left Afghan soil in August 2021. The Taliban has recaptured power in Kabul.

Pakistan’s military dictator, General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq used the Afghan war to bargain for good monetary assistance and political support from the USA. The Pakistani establishment did not foresee the end result of the radicalization of society and the Islamization of institutions. After the Afghanistan war ended, the Pakistani security establishment used many returnees to fight its proxy war on the Indian side of Jammu and Kashmir. Some militant groups have set up their base in Pakistan to enforce their version of Islam on the society. The militants are now fighting against the Pakistani state and carrying out attacks inside the country. Pakistan-based or Pakistani establishment-trained militants have also carried out a series of attacks in India in which many Indians have been killed. Some of those attacks had boiled military tensions between India and Pakistan. For instance, in 2019, after a militant attack in Pulwama on the Indian side of Kashmir, India carried out an air attack inside Pakistani territory in Balakot in Mansehra District of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province of the country. At that time, Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state, wrote in his 2023 book Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love that after the Indian attack, Pakistanis had begun to prepare their nuclear weapons to strike back. India was also contemplating an escalation. However, they were convinced by the US diplomats that ‘neither was preparing to go nuclear’ (NDTV, 2023).

Sri Lanka plunged into a deep ethnic crisis in the 1980s. The July 1983 attack carried out by the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Elam (LTTE), leading to the death of Sri Lankan soldiers, escalated violence between the LTTE and the Sri Lankan State. For many reasons, including geopolitical concerns, India attempted to bring settlement between the LTTE and the Sinhala-dominated Sri Lankan government. India’s effort led to the signing of an accord between New Delhi and Colombo in 1987. India later sent a peacekeeping force to Sri Lanka whose main task was to disarm the different militant groups and bring normalcy in the country. However, it backfired and became the cause of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the former Indian prime minister, in 1991. During the last days of the Fourth Elam War (2006–2009), though India remained away from Colombo’s affairs, New Delhi maintained an eagle’s eye on the developments (see Menon, 2016). In the United Nations Human Rights Council, India’s vote on the human rights violations by the Sri Lankan state during the last Elam war has differed according to the degree of New Delhi–Colombo’s bilateral ties and geopolitical concerns. In the UNHRC resolutions of 2012 and 2013, India voted in favour. India has abstained from voting on a resolution on Sri Lanka at the UNHRC since 2014. The 2017 and 2019 resolutions were adopted without a vote (Subramanian, 2021). In 2021 also, India abstained from voting. In 2022, due to the economic crisis in Sri Lanka, former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, an epitome of Sinhala nationalism, was forced to flee his homeland after months of protest. Considering its geopolitical concerns, India initially provided about US $4 billion in aid to deal with the economic crisis.

After their return from the Afghan war, some Bangladeshis formed organizations to spread a radical version of Islam in the country. Also, in the 1980s, tenets of Wahhabism slowly infiltrated Bangladesh through the indoctrinated young workers who returned from the Middle East countries. The country also witnessed a big shift in domestic politics which pursued policies to Islamize the state and society. Over the years, Bangladesh has witnessed a number of militant attacks carried out by Islamists, causing the deaths of several people. In 2016, the militants carried out the most daring attack when they took hostage foreign nationals at Holy Artisan Bakery in Dhaka. In that attack, around 22 people were killed. Due to the porous border, some of the militants cross into the Indian side of the border after committing crime in Bangladesh. Notably, in 2014, Indian intelligence captured members of the Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen plotting to kill Bangladesh’s Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina. They were handed over to Bangladesh’s authority.

In the 1980s, India witnessed a spate of events, such as Sikh militancy, anti-Sikh pogrom carried out after the assassination of the then-Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, the beginning of the militancy in Kashmir Valley and the Ramjanambhoomi (Lord Rama’s birthplace) movement. In the anti-Sikh pogroms, according to unofficial records, between 5,000 and 15,000 Sikhs were killed. Even today, a section of the Sikh diaspora and Sikhs living in India feel they have been denied justice. Such feelings have not subsided even after India’s Sikh Prime Minister Manmohan Singh apologized in the country’s parliament in August 2005 for the violence committed against the community. Second, the 1980s saw the beginning of militancy in the Kashmir Valley. Since then, several people have lost their lives due to militant attacks. Operations by the Indian security forces under the Armed Forces Special Powers Act have created humanitarian problems and alienated several youths. In August 2019, fulfilling its decades-old political promise, the Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) government scrapped the special status accorded the state under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution. The revocation of the Special Status was challenged in the Supreme Court (SC). In its December 2023 decision, the Court upheld the Centre’s decision. The Ramjanambhoomi movement in the 1980s created a favourable political constituency for Hindutva politics. After years of legal proceedings, the SC delivered its final verdict on the issue in 2019. The court order allotted the disputed land for the temple and provided land for the mosque at some distance. Four months after his retirement, Ranjan Gogoi, the Chief Justice of India who headed a bench that delivered the verdict, was nominated by the BJP to the India’s upper house of the parliament. In January 2024, the ‘new’ Indian state facilitated and administered the consecration of the Rama temple at Ayodhya.

The rationale of this special section is to understand how the events that occurred in the 1980s are organically linked to socio- political developments in present-day South Asia. As India covers about 3,287,260 km² of around 5,135,270 km² of South Asia’s surface area (The World Bank, n.d.), any sort of political or social developments in neighbouring countries have spillover effects on the country and vice versa.

The first paper by Amit Ranjan analyses how the beginning of strong Hindu identity politics in the 1980s helped the BJP to become a powerful political force in India in subsequent years. The second paper by Farooq Sulehria showcases Afghan women’s struggle for their rights in a conflict-ridden country and argues that the 1980s proved critical in shaping feminist debates and discourses as well as women’s rights activism in Afghanistan. Farhan Siddiqi’s paper analyses how sociopolitical developments in the 1980s endure in contemporary Pakistan. The fourth paper by P. Sahadevan seeks to analyse how and why the Sri Lankan polity and society have become easily susceptible to past influences and the difficulties in charting a new, progressive path in the contemporary period. The next paper by Delwar Hossain examines the trajectories of secularization, de-secularization and re-secularization in Bangladesh. The final paper by Jayashree Vivekanandan intends to discuss factors influencing India’s self-image and elite consensus around contested fraternities.