Violent Punjab,quiescent Bengal,and the partition of India |
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Authors: | Manjeet S. Pardesi Sumit Ganguly |
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Affiliation: | 1. Political Science and International Relations Programme, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand;2. Department of Political Science, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA |
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Abstract: | Why did the Punjab bear the brunt of the mass violence and the migration that accompanied the partition of India? This paper makes the case for analytical eclecticism by showing that the following three explanations – centred respectively on democratisation, nationalism, and ideas; the commitment problem; and the security dilemma – account for the violence/migration in the different stages in the run-up to the partition of India. Instead of arguing that ‘everything mattered’, this paper elucidates the complex causality at work by demonstrating how these factors interacted with one another during the different stages leading to India’s partition. |
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Keywords: | Partition India Punjab Bengal mass violence mass migration analytical eclecticism |
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