The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India: Political Leadership and Ethnonationalist Movements

Jugdep S Chima

SAGE Publications, Mar 9, 2010 - History - 332 pages

This book provides an authoritative political history of the Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab by focusing on the "patterns of political leadership", a previously unexplored variable. It describes in detail the events which led to the emergence of the "Punjab Crisis", the various means through which the movement was sustained, and the changing nature of political leadership and courses of military action which necessitated its decline in the mid-1990s.

Providing a microhistorical analysis of the Punjab crisis, the book argues that the trajectories of ethnonationalist movements are largely based on the interaction between self-interested political elites, who not only react to the structural choices they face, but whose purposeful actions and decisions ultimately affect the course of ethnic group-state relations.

About the author

Jugdep S Chima currently holds the position of Associate Editor for South Asia with Asian Survey (Institute of East Asian Studies) at the University of California, Berkeley. He previously held the positions of Visiting Scholar and Research Fellow with the Center for South Asia Studies at the same institution during 2005–06 and 2003–05, respectively. His research articles have been published in Asian Survey, Journal of Commonwealth and Comparative Politics, Review of International Studies, Small Wars and Insurgencies, and Studies in Conflict and Terrorism.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Sikh Separatist Insurgency in India: Political Leadership and Ethnonationalist Movements
• Author: Jugdep S Chima
• Publisher: SAGE Publications, 2010
• ISBN: 8132103025, 9788132103028
• Length: 332 pages
• Subjects: History / Asia / Southeast Asia