Introduction The Post-Colonial States of South Asia: Democracy, Identity, Development and Security

Abstract

Five decades after the end of colonial rule, the states of South Asia are still faced with problems related to democratic governance, social identities, development and welfare, and territorial security. The establishment of participatory political and economic processes in the last half century has led to the mobilisation of new social groups with different values from those who came to power in the early post-independence period. This has raised serious issues of state legitimacy and governance on the one hand and a questioning of popular identities on the other. Whether manifested in its extreme form in the violent dissolution of the state after a civil war as in Pakistan over twenty-five years ago, or the traumatic assertion of the rights of the majority ethno-religious group as in Sri Lanka and India in recent years, these issues run as a common thread through the political experience of all South Asian states.