Book Launch - Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India

Book launch of the Colonial Institutions and Civil War: Indirect Rule and Maoist Insurgency in India (Cambridge University Press), authored by Shivaji Mukherjee (University of Toronto).

 

ABOUT THE BOOK:  

 

What explains the peculiar spatial variation of Maoist insurgency in India? Mukherjee develops a novel typology of colonial indirect rule and land tenure in India, showing how they can lead to land inequality, weak state and Maoist insurgency. Using a multi-method research design that combines qualitative analysis of archival data on Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh states, Mukherjee demonstrates path dependence of land/ethnic inequality leading to Maoist insurgency. This is nested within a quantitative analysis of a district level dataset which uses an instrumental variable analysis to address potential selection bias in colonial choice of princely states. The author also analyses various Maoist documents, and interviews with key human rights activists, police officers, and bureaucrats, providing rich contextual understanding of the motivations of agents. Furthermore, he demonstrates the generalizability of his theory to cases of colonial frontier indirect rule causing ​ethnic secessionist insurgency in Burma, and the Taliban insurgency in Pakistan.  

 

AUTHOR BIO:  

 

Shivaji Mukherjee is an Assistant Professor in Political Science, at the University of Toronto, Mississauga, and also part of the Graduate Faculty at the University of Toronto, St. George. He is also a Faculty Associate at the Center for South Asian Studies, Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. He works on political violence and conflict in India, and does research on insurgencies in South Asia, particularly focusing on colonial legacies of indirect rule and Maoist insurgency in India. He also has an interest in state formation, legacies of colonial institutions, and other types of political violence in South Asia like the Kashmir insurgency and Hindu-Muslim violence and vigilantism.