Introduction to the First Issue
| Author | K.C. Suri,Suhas Palshikar |
| Published date | 01 June 2013 |
| Date | 01 June 2013 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/2321023013482781 |
| Subject Matter | Introduction |
Military-Madrasa-Mullah Complex vii
India Quarterly, 66, 2 (2010): 133–149
A Global Threat vii
Introduction to the First Issue
Suhas Palshikar
K.C. Suri
Both within India and outside, and within the academia and the activist circles, the enterprise called
politics in India receives a mixed response. On the one hand, there are celebratory voices arguing
that democratic politics in India has successfully entrenched itself while on the other hand, there are
criticisms of its inadequacies. This is natural given the complex nature of India’s politics and vast terrain
that it covers from the production of ideas and attempts at social reconstruction to shaping public policies
and contestations over public goods. This complexity and multifarious nature makes the study of
politics in India a very attractive and challenging proposition. A large body of scholars—within India and
based outside of India—is currently engaged in this study and a still larger body of students and teachers
are consumers of the literature that is produced on India’s politics. Even after six decades of its demo-
cratic experience, India’s politics continues to attract attention because of the acute challenges it
encounters.
With more than half the world’s population living in democratic polities, it is only natural that the
democratic experience of India should throw up many lessons (and paradoxes) for practitioners as also
students of democracy across the globe. Many experiments that have taken place in India have relevance
for other democracies. As theorization of democracy undergoes a transformation, an awareness is grow-
ing that what happens in India and such other relatively ‘newer’ democracies, may actually be more
normal than experiences of the ‘older’ democracies. This generates renewed interest in India and simi-
larly situated societies. Politics in India also throws up a challenge in that its record of running institu-
tions is not very strong but the spread of the democratic norm is strong enough to tide over the crises of
institutions. In sum, there continues to be a divergence of assessment of what has been happening in
India’s politics. The debate between the ‘Idea of India’ and the ‘Indian Ideology’ captures the contours
of the academic concerns that India’s politics produces.
The aim of this new journal, Studies in Indian Politics will be to bring to its readers, through its pages,
these concerns and debates. Therefore, this journal will focus exclusively on ‘Indian politics’. While we
employ the terms ‘politics in India’ and ‘Indian politics’ almost interchangeably, we are aware that what
is ‘Indian’ about Indian politics is itself a question worth investigating.
A brief explanation about the scope of ‘Indian politics’ might be in order as we place before scholars
and researchers the first issue of Studies in Indian Politics. Four pairs of activities and intellectual inquir-
ies form the broad field called Indian politics.
The first pair consists of the issue of processes/ideas. The field of Indian Politics, as it has developed,
mostly suggests that it is a somewhat restricted area of study focusing on the political process
as it unfolds in India in contemporary times and the immediate past. However, a range of ideas that
evolved at least over the last couple of centuries beginning with the colonial advent in India (and indeed
much before that as Rajeev Bhargava’s article in this issue shows) shaped the way people understood
Studies in Indian Politics
1(1) vii–x
© 2013 Lokniti, Centre for the
Study of Developing Societies
SAGE Publications
Los Angeles, London,
New Delhi, Singapore,
Washington DC
DOI: 10.1177/2321023013482781
http://inp.sagepub.com
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