Abstract
In this issue of Studies in Indian Politics, we slightly step out of India! This issue has a special section on South Asia. Long ago, studying India itself meant studying South Asia. However, gradually, the internal variation and autonomous trajectories of social and political processes in different countries of South Asia alerted scholars to the pitfalls of conflating India with South Asia. Since then, rich scholarship on both the region and, separately, on various countries of the region has developed. At the same time, scholars have been working on comparative studies within South Asia and finding out if there is a geopolitical unit called South Asia that can be studied without compromising the consciousness about the independent process of each country.
Temporally, too, the developments in this region can be seen as consisting of different time frames when the region and its components threw up varied patterns. The special section in this issue, thus, imagines the 1980s as a major point of departure as far as the region is concerned. The Guest Editor, Amit Ranjan, argues that specific developments since the 1980s deserve special attention in order to understand the region and also to understand the domestic politics of each country. With this approach, this special section addresses key moments around the 1980s in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.
This contextualization of the regional processes would help a student of the region and of India situate the process in India in a broader context. The moment of the 1980s and decades since then have mixed socio-political dynamics that shaped societies in the region. This dynamics consisted of liberalization of the economies, awareness of rights of newer sections, a combination of nationalism and majoritarian assertion; all this resulting into contrary processes of democratization and cynicism about democracy. It is for this reason that the study of India’s neighbours in the region is important for students of Indian politics. We are thankful to Amit Ranjan for offering to bring together these papers for this special section and steering the special section.