Home > Research > Publications & Outputs > Politics and the Family

Electronic data

  • INDIAREVIEW-D-19-00027_R1

    Rights statement: This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in India Review on 24/06/2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14736489.2020.1754009

    Accepted author manuscript, 3.05 MB, PDF document

    Available under license: CC BY-NC: Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License

Links

Text available via DOI:

View graph of relations

Politics and the Family: Rethinking the India-Pakistan Two-Nations Theory through the Familial Construction of Political Ideas

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/07/2020
<mark>Journal</mark>India Review
Issue number3
Volume19
Number of pages31
Pages (from-to)223-253
Publication StatusPublished
Early online date24/06/20
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

There are very few scholarly endeavours that have focused Pakistan-India partition and their ongoing conflict from an indigenous theoretical lens. A psycho-cultural paradigm has been used in this article to re-examine and reconceptualize the enduring two-Nations theory – a political ideology, which manifests Hindu-Muslim discord in the Indian Subcontinent by construing both communities as distinct nations based on their inherent ethno-religious and civilizational differences. Considering a very complex process of mass conversion, assimilation, and criss-crossing of caste-system between both groups, this article argues that it is theoretically problematic to differentiate between Hindus and Muslims purely on ethno-religious grounds. Given the significant impact of the institution of family on the lives of the Subcontinental people, regardless of their faith – I propose that it can be more explanatory to categorize both groups as competing branches of a joint family, to understand the construction of political ideology of two-Nations theory in familial terms. This article seeks to clarify the theoretical mechanism through which the family-level ideas can shape peoples’ worldview, informing the way they perceive abstract concepts such as group-conflict and the nation, thus impacting their political thoughts.

Bibliographic note

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in India Review on 24/06/2020, available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14736489.2020.1754009