Gamini Samaranayake reviews Political Conflict in South Asia by Gerald H Peiris … Peradeniya, 2013 .. from Island, 5 March 2014
This monograph has a broad scope, one that encompasses political conflict in the countries in five national entities of South Asia – India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka – and their trajectories of state-formation with all their turmoil, upheavals and inter-group confrontations. In the literature on contemporary processes of globalisation there has been a widespread practice of referring to Asia in general terms. This has tended to obfuscate the very distinct difference between South Asia and the other macro-regions of the ‘Asiatic Crescent’. South Asia, being the cradle of four main world religions, is the venue of a rich and highly diversified social and political history. It is the home of almost one-fifth of the world population, with a large proportion of its inhabitants living in conditions of poverty. Although the British Empire at its zenith included almost the whole of South Asia, the present nation-states of the region have their own distinctive political legacies from the past. Continue reading
