Routledge Handbook of State, Nation and Nationalism in South Asia

Introduction

Part I: Nature of State

1 Changing Nature of the Indian State

Amit Ranjan

2 Colonial and Postcolonial Anthropology Among the Nagas: Shaping the Modern Nation-State in India's Borderlands 

 Debojyoti Das

3 The Demand for Pakistan: Multiple Imaginations Amidst Constitutional Debates 

Iqbal Singh Sevea

4 Unmanning the Indian Action Hero in Pakistani Women’s Cinema (1980s): Community, State, and Gendered Dissidence   

Esha Niyogi De

5 The Nature of the Nepali State (1768–2025): A Regime Type Perspective

Abi Chamlagai 

6 Afghanistan—A Troubled Past, a Troubled Present: A Troubled Future?

Safiullah Taye

7 Things Fall Apart: Assessing US-led State-building Efforts in Afghanistan (2001– 2021)

Kasturi Chatterjee

8 Maldives, Small State Identities and Agential Power: A Framework for Analysing the Prominence of South Asia’s Smaller States

Athaulla A. Rasheed  and Mohamed Hoodh Ibrahim

Part II: Imagining a Nation and Nation-Making  

9 Contested Citizenships: Overseas Indians and the Pursuit for ‘Dual Nationality’ after 1947

Haimanti Roy

10 Of Nations, Moments, and Nationalism: The Bangladesh Case

Amena Mohsin and F.M. Arafat

11 Subversive Others, Liminal Subjects: Minorities and the Making of a Nation in Pakistan

Imran Ahmed

12 Hindu Community in Bangladesh: Between Identity and Marginality

Roshni Kapur   

13 Identity Politics in Jammu and Kashmir: Fragmentation and Contestation  

Ambreen Gul Shah

14 Recognition or Reconfiguration: The Politics of Gender and Nation Building in India  

Natallia Khaniejo 

15 Changing Idea of the Nation in Bhutan due to Mass Outmigration

Aanehi Mundra

16 Bhutanese National Identity: A Changing Narrative from Monarchy to Democracy  

Kencho Pelzom

Part III: Contesting Nationalism

17 Linguistic Nationalism in South Asia: Conceptual and Historical Understanding  

Asha Sarangi

18 Bengali and Bangladeshi Nationalism

Ali Riaz and Md. Harun Or Rashid

19 Internal Colonial Nationalism and Indigenous Resistance: The Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh

Hosna J Shewly

20 Ethnic Nationalism as Resistance: Sindhi and Siraiki Movements in Pakistan

Asma Faiz

21 Tamil Nationalism in Sri Lanka: Historical Foundations, Political Dynamics, and Post-War Challenges

Diotima Chattoraj and Rohan Gunaratna

22 The Consolidation of Hindu Nationalism in India

Manjari Katju 

23 “Nationalism of Small Peoples” :  Sikh Nationalism

Gurharpal Singh

24 Caste and Nationalism in India

N. Sukumar and Ankur Kumar Sahani

25 Muslim Citizens’ Engagement With Hindutva Nationalism

Manjur Ali

26 Crown, Faith, and Tongue: The Evolution of Nepali Nationalism since Unification

Santosh Sharma Poudel

27 Balochistan as the Achilles Heel of Pakistani Nationalism

Zainab Ahmed and Farooq Sulehria  

28 ‘Baiya-Toiya’ and the Aspirational Middle-Class Nationalist Imaginary: Shifting Axes of Political Polarization in Sri Lanka   

Rajni Gamage and Harindra B. Dassanayake

29 Scripted Divisions: Colonial Epistemologies and the Invention of Linguistic Nationalism in Sri Lanka

Nimendra Mawalagedara

Biography

Amit Ranjan is a research fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. His latest book is Challenge, Continuity and Change in Pakistan edited with Ian Talbot. He is co-editor of Environment, Climate Change and Migration in South Asia (with Rajesh Kharat and Pallavi Deka) (2023), and Urban Development and Environmental History in Modern South Asia (with Ian Talbot) (2023).