Table Of ContentPolitics of the ‘Other’ in India and
China
The social sciences have been heavily influenced by modernisation theory,
focusing on issues of economic growth, political development, and social
change, in order to develop a predictive model of linear progress for developing
countries following a Western prototype. Under this hegemonic paradigm of
development the world tends to get divided into simplistic binary oppositions
between the ‘West’ and the ‘rest’, ‘us’ and ‘them’, and Self and Other.
Proposing to shift the discussion on what constitutes the Other as opposed to
the Self from philosophy and cultural studies to the social sciences, this book
explores how the structural asymmetries existing between Western discourses
and the realities of the non-W estern world manifest themselves in the ideas,
institutions, and socio-p olitical practices of India and China, and in how far they
shape the social scientist’s understanding of their discipline in general. It pro-
vides a counter- narrative by revealing the relativity of geographies, and by
showing that the conventional presentation of core elements of the Asian socio-
political set-u p as ‘aberrations’ from the Western models fails to acknowledge
their inherent strategic character of adapting Western concepts to meet local
requirements.
Drawing on multiple disciplines, concepts, and contexts in India and China,
the book makes a valuable contribution to the theory and practice of politics, as
well as to International and Asian Studies.
Lion König is Adjunct Faculty at the Centre for Culture, Media, and Govern-
ance, New Delhi, India. He is the co-e ditor of Globalisation and Governance in
India: New Challenges to Society and Institutions also published by Routledge
(2016).
Bidisha Chaudhuri is an Assistant Professor at the International Institute of
Information Technology-Bangalore (IIIT-B), India. She is the author of the book
E-Governance in India: Interlocking Politics, Technology and Culture, also pub-
lished by Routledge (2014).
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Politics of the ‘Other’ in
India and China
Western concepts in non-W estern contexts
Edited by
Lion König and
Bidisha Chaudhuri
First published 2016
by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2016 Selection and editorial matter, Lion König and Bidisha Chaudhuri;
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Contents
List of figures xii
Notes on contributors xiii
Foreword: constructing and deconstructing the ‘Other’ in the
social science discourse xix
T.K. OOMMEN
Preface and acknowledgements xxiv
List of abbreviations xxvi
Introduction: politics of the ‘Other’ in India and
China – Western concepts in non-W estern contexts 1
LION KöNIG AND BIDISHA CHAUDHURI
PART I
Concepts in context: the case of India 15
1 The Hindu nationalist strategy of stigmatisation and
emulation of ‘threatening Others’: an Indian style fascism? 17
CHRISTOPHE JAFFRELOT
2 Stretching secularism: conceptual equivocality in the Indian
context 31
LION KöNIG
3 Muslim citizens versus citizen Muslims: a study of
discursive strategies in contemporary India 48
JULTEN ABDELHALIM
4 ‘Back to the roots’: the indigenisation of Western party
politics in post-c olonial India 61
CLEMENS SPIESS
