Comparative Politics

B11(b) - Religion, Ethnicity, and Conflict in South Asia

Date: Jun 4 | Time: 10:15am to 11:45am | Location:

Chair/Président/Présidente : Jacob Fortier (Northwestern University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Geoffrey Cameron (McMaster University)

Discussant/Commentateur/Commentatrice : Alisha Dhingra (Satyawati College)

Islamizing communists: Contesting the politics of Islam and revolution in Pakistan: Noaman Ali (University of Bath)
Abstract: Dominant scholarly views of Islamization consider it a conservative phenomenon associated with non-democratic regimes or increasing illiberalism. Recent scholarship, however, has emphasized the “many faces” of political engagements with Islam, ranging from quietist to democratic approaches. However, the debate tends to examine the thought of Islamic scholars or the activities of Islamist actors, reflecting a bias toward doctrinal interpretation, and conceiving of Islam as inimical to more radical socialist and communist politics. This paper advances the study of subaltern Islam by examining how the Marxist-Leninist-oriented Mazdoor Kisan Party (Worker Peasant Party)’s leadership of Pakistan’s largest peasant movement engaged with both the doctrinal “great tradition” and everyday “little tradition” of religious belief. I show how a conservative Islam that defended landed elites was contested by a contingent alliance of communist organizers, local Islamists and scholars, and mobilized peasants aligned on an interpretation of religion that conformed to radical aims of land redistribution. I argue that peasants’ forcible redistribution of land and political power resulted in Islamization, insofar as formal and informal political economic practices were increasingly (re-)ordered according to Islamic rules and symbols (Lorch 2019). The same process, however, also resulted in both doctrinal and vernacular Islams being used as cover for the fragmentation of the subaltern alliance and the perpetuation of certain forms of class-based domination that emerged amongst a differentiating peasantry. Ultimately, I show that rather than inherently conservative, Islamization can be better conceived as a contingent process of contestation along class, caste, and gender lines.

The Unmoved Mover: Pakistan’s Military Establishment as a Moderator of the Social and Electoral Mobilization of Islamist Parties in Pakistan (1947-2024): Muhammad Bilal Shakir (McGill University), Erik Kuhonta (McGill University)
Abstract: Why do some political parties with strong ideologies struggle to translate their substantial capacity for social mobilization—such as street protests and influence on policy formulation—into effective electoral mobilization? Conversely, why are some parties able to punch above their electoral weight? This paper contends that a state’s ruling elite acts as a key moderator in the causal relationship between “organizational effectiveness” and “structural fragmentation” and these parties' ability to mobilize socially and electorally. Empirically, the analysis centers on Pakistan, the second-largest Muslim-majority country in the world. In Pakistan, the ruling elite primarily comprises Pakistan’s military establishment and its allied political parties, as well as members of state institutions such as the judiciary, bureaucracy, and the media, often called the "establishment." First, the paper examines the “why” component of this moderation by the military elite in Pakistan. It underlines that two key conditions moderate the relationship between organizational effectiveness, structural fragmentation, and the high social and low electoral mobilization of Islamist parties in Pakistan or “divergent mobilization.” These two conditions are: the relative strength of a state’s ruling elite versus an oppositional elite and the aligned incentives of a state’s ruling elite with the divergent mobilization of Islamist parties in Pakistan. Second, the “how” component elaborates on two crucial mechanisms through which the ruling elite shapes the social and electoral mobilization of Islamist parties: 1) a pattern of cooptation combined with limited repression, and 2) a pattern of political control. To support these claims, I draw on data collected from eleven months of fieldwork, including sixty semi-structured elite interviews, two focus groups with non-elite participants, ethnographic observations gathered by visiting state facilities as well as archival documents such as newspaper records dating back to the 1940s, and the most comprehensive electoral dataset on Islamist political outcomes spanning eleven election cycles from 1970 to 2024. These empirical resources underpin the argument that Pakistan’s military establishment plays a crucial role in moderating the variation in the relationship between the social and electoral mobilization of Islamist parties in Pakistan.

Repoliticizing the Anti-Politics Machine: Development, Expertise, and Ethnic Politics in Sri Lanka: Uvin Dissanayake (McGill University), Narendra Subramanian (McGill University)
Abstract: Since the publication of James Ferguson’s 1990 book of the same title, the image of the development industry as an ‘anti-politics machine’ has become the dominant analytical metaphor in development studies. Indeed, the idea of development as depoliticizing is prevalent not only in critical literature but increasingly in mainstream development management theory, with frameworks like ‘Adaptive Management’ and ‘Doing Development Differently’ being proposed to better incorporate politics in development practice. I argue that this metaphor and the theoretical consensus surrounding it is misleading. This paper puts forward a theory of repoliticization in development, understood as a process by which development practices reveal the contingency of a given socio-political arrangement, challenging a consensus that has allowed for it to be naturalized. I use practice tracing methods to explore how different groups of development actors, namely the Sri Lankan military and 'international development' practitioners, engage back and forth in processes of repoliticization and depoliticization on behalf of rival ordering projects. To do so, I examine the ethnic politics of the Mahaweli Development Program, an irrigation project implemented to make use of Sri Lanka’s largest river, from 1977 to the present. I show how processes of ‘rendering technical' in development practice, commonly understood as part and parcel of depoliticization, can instead generate political contestation. By questioning this assumed opposition between the political and the technical, I hope to show how the concept of repoliticization can help us better understand the effects of development practice on the societies that are the objects of its intervention.

Peace Building in South Asia: Exploring through lenses of Structure, Culture and Rationality: Muhammad Sajid (University of the Punjab,Lahore-Pakistan)
Abstract: Durable peace in South Asia is still a fantasy. This research attempts to find out causes of failure of peace building between Pakistan and India. Due to its comprehension, the concept of peace building has been used. Using paradigms of comparative politics i.e. Rationality, Structure and Culture as well as some theories of International Relations, this research aims at finding the real causes of failure of peace building attempts. Though conflict and peace is studied under the umbrella of International Relations, this research is also an attempt to explain peace buildi ng by using theories of comparative politics. It focuses on how and why individual and collective human agency and structural solutions failed in peace building in South Asia. It also explains how ethnic structure, factional politics, ideological indoctrination in politics, building of extreme nationalist narrative, territorial disputes and non-political elites posed hurdles in the way of peace process. By mapping existing literature, this research not only fills the gap by finding root causes of peace building failure but also suggests possible solutions of peace building between the two states.