Ashutosh Varshney | |
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Born | 1957 (age 65–66) Uttar Pradesh, India |
Awards | 2008 Guggenheim Fellowship
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | |
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Institutions | |
Main interests | Ethnic and religious conflict |
Ashutosh Varshney (born 1957) is an Indian-born political scientist and academic. He is currently the Sol Goldman Professor of International Studies and the Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Brown University, where he also directs the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. Varshney previously taught at Harvard University and the University of Michigan.
Varshney was born in Uttar Pradesh in 1957. He received Bachelors and Master's degrees from the University of Allahabad. He spent a year at Jawaharlal Nehru University before matriculating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he earned a Sc.M. and Ph.D. in 1985 and 1990, respectively.
Varshney's books include Battles Half Won: India’s Improbable Democracy (2013), Collective Violence in Indonesia (2009), Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (Yale 2002), India in the Era of Economic Reforms (1999), and Democracy, Development and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India (Cambridge 1995).
He is currently working on three projects; a multi-country project on cities and ethnic conflict; political economy of urbanization in India; and Indian politics and society between elections.
He served on the former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan’s Millennium Task Force on Poverty (2002-5). He has also served as an adviser to the World Bank, UNDP and the Club of Madrid.
Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie is an Indian-born British-American novelist. His work often combines magic realism with historical fiction and primarily deals with connections, disruptions, and migrations between Eastern and Western civilizations, typically set on the Indian subcontinent. Rushdie's second novel, Midnight's Children (1981), won the Booker Prize in 1981 and was deemed to be "the best novel of all winners" on two occasions, marking the 25th and the 40th anniversary of the prize.
An ethnic conflict is a conflict between two or more ethnic groups. While the source of the conflict may be political, social, economic or religious, the individuals in conflict must expressly fight for their ethnic group's position within society. This criterion differentiates ethnic conflict from other forms of struggle.
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The Satanic Verses is the fourth novel of British-Indian writer Salman Rushdie. First published in September 1988, the book was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. As with his previous books, Rushdie used magical realism and relied on contemporary events and people to create his characters. The title refers to the Satanic Verses, a group of Quranic verses about three pagan Meccan goddesses: Allāt, Al-Uzza, and Manāt. The part of the story that deals with the "satanic verses" was based on accounts from the historians al-Waqidi and al-Tabari.
"Tryst with Destiny" was an English-language speech by Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Prime Minister of India, to the Indian Constituent Assembly in the Parliament House, on the eve of India's Independence, towards midnight on 14 August 1947. The speech spoke on the aspects that transcended Indian history. It is considered to be one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century and to be a landmark oration that captures the essence of the triumphant culmination of the Indian independence movement against British colonial rule in India. He declared the end of the colonial era and called on citizens to recognize the promise and opportunity of the moment:
"Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny. Now the time has come when we shall redeem our pledge - not wholly or in full measure - but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."
The Emergency in India was a 21-month period from 1975 to 1977 when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had a state of emergency declared across the country.
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Indian nationalism is an instance of territorial nationalism, which is inclusive of all of the people of India, despite their diverse ethnic, linguistic and religious backgrounds. Indian nationalism can trace roots to pre-colonial India, but was fully developed during the Indian independence movement which campaigned for independence from British rule. Indian nationalism quickly rose to popularity in India through these united anti-colonial coalitions and movements. Independence movement figures like Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru spearheaded the Indian nationalist movement. After Indian Independence, Nehru and his successors continued to campaign on Indian nationalism in face of border wars with both China and Pakistan. After the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 and the Bangladesh Liberation War, Indian nationalism reached its post-independence peak. However by the 1980s, religious tensions reached a melting point and Indian nationalism sluggishly collapsed. Despite its decline and the rise of religious nationalism; Indian nationalism and its historic figures continue to strongly influence the politics of India and reflect an opposition to the sectarian strands of Hindu nationalism and Muslim nationalism.
Indian English literature (IEL), also referred to as Indian Writing in English (IWE), is the body of work by writers in India who write in the English language but whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous languages of India. Its early history began with the works of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio and Michael Madhusudan Dutt followed by Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo. R. K. Narayan, Mulk Raj Anand and Raja Rao contributed to the growth and popularity of Indian English fiction in the 1930s. It is also associated, in some cases, with the works of members of the Indian diaspora who subsequently compose works in English.
Donald L. Horowitz is James B. Duke Professor of Law and Political Science at Duke Law School and Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, United States.
Communal violence is a form of violence that is perpetrated across ethnic or communal lines, the violent parties feel solidarity for their respective groups, and victims are chosen based upon group membership. The term includes conflicts, riots and other forms of violence between communities of different religious faith or ethnic origins.
General elections were held in India between 25 October 1951 and 21 February 1952. India attained independence on 15 August 1947 and set up an Election Commission two years later. In March 1950, Sukumar Sen was appointed as the first Chief Election Commissioner. A month later, the Indian Parliament passed the Representation of the People Act which provided the conduct for election for the Houses of Parliament and the Houses of Legislature for each state. It was conducted under the provisions of the Indian Constitution, which was adopted on 26 November 1949. Elections to most of the state legislatures took place simultaneously.
The Muhajir people are Muslim immigrants of various ethnic groups and regional origins, and their descendants, who migrated from various regions of India after the Partition of India to settle in the newly independent state of Pakistan. The term "Muhajirs" refers to those Muslim migrants from India, who settled in urban Sindh. The Muhajir community also includes stranded Pakistanis in Bangladesh who migrated to Pakistan after 1971 following the secession of East Pakistan in the Bangladesh Liberation War.
Myron Weiner was an American political scientist and renowned scholar of India, South Asia, internal and international migration, ethnic conflict, child labor, democratization, political demography, and the politics and policies of developing countries.
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Nirupam Bajpai, a US-based Indian educationist and economist, is the Senior Research Scholar at the Earth Institute of the Columbia University and the Senior Development Advisor and Director of its South Asia Program. He is the founding director of the Columbia Global Centers South Asia, an office he held between July 2010 and August 2014, and is the author of a number of publications, including India in the Era of Economic Reforms.
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Jadaun or Jadon is a clan of Rajput; it may represent a clan of Gurjar as well.
In the Name of the Nation: India and its Northeast is a non-fiction political science book about Assam. It is written by professor and commentator Sanjib Baruah and published by Stanford University Press in 2020.