Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia Volume 2 (Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal)

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Northern South Asia - including Northern India, Nepal, Pakistan, Bhutan and Bangladesh - encompasses huge ethnic, cultural, and socio-political diversity and has experienced far-reaching social change in recent times. This volume analyses the dynamics of social categories, group identities, and social and political movements in the region.

Part 1 examines political and social processes, focusing on the different ways in which the rise of previously subordinate castes has changed the practical and normative bases of local life. In Part 2 four contrasting chapters bring new perspectives, insights, and materials to bear on communal conflict and the rise of Hindu nationalism in India and on religious and ritual change in Nepal. Part 3 deals with various forms of activism including Bengalis in Delhi, movements of bonded agricultural labourers, ethnic groups, anti-dam movements, and the social basis of Maoism in Nepal. Part 4 consists of an 'Afterword' by Jonathan Parry analysing the changing significance of caste in the region.

This is second of the two volumes jointly entitled Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia. They bring together scholars from Japan, Nepal, India, Europe, and America in order to deepen our understanding of social change in the region, on the basis of fresh fieldwork reports and new analyses.

Hiroshi Ishii is Professor Emeritus at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. He has conducted anthropological research among the Newars, the Parbate Hindus, and the Maithils in Nepal since 1970. He has published Nepal: A Himalayan Kingdom in Transition (1996, with P.P. Karan et al.), and other books and articles in both Japanese and English.

David N. Gellner is Professor of Social Anthropology and a Fellow of All Souls College in the University of Oxford. He is the author or editor of many books on Nepal and Northern South Asia, including Vernacular Religion: Cultural Politics, Community Belonging, and Personal Practice in the UK's Nepali Diaspora (Vajra, 2019), and a special issue of Contributions to Nepalese Studies 46.1: Nepali Dalits in Transition (CNAS, TU, 2019).

Katsuo Nawa is Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology, Institute of Oriental Culture, the University of Tokyo. He is the author of An Ethnographic Study on Rituals and Social Categories of Byans, Nepal, and Adjacent Regions: Another Constellation of 'Modernity' (2002, in Japanese), which was awarded the 30th Shibusawa Prize.

In 1997 the Japanese Association for South Asian Studies initiated an academic series entitled 'Japanese Studies on South Asia' under an agreement with Manohar Publishers & Distributors. The initial purpose of the series was (and remains) to introduce the work of Japanese scholars of South Asia to the international academic community. So far, five volumes have been published in this series and the contributors are Japanese authors (previous volumes in the series are listed on the fly leaf). Unlike these previous volumes, the present set, consisting of two volumes, contains articles by scholars from various countries and Japanese scholars make up just half of the authors.

The present volumes (i.e. Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia. Vol. 1: Nepalis Inside and Outside Nepal and Vol. 2: Political and Social Transformations in North India and Nepal) are the outcome of two inter-national workshops held in February and June 2004 at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA or AA-ken), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, Tokyo. The workshops were entitled `The Dynamics of Social and Political Change in Nepal' and 'Social Dynamics in Northern South Asia' and included ten and twenty-one papers respectively.

This collaborative study began with two institutional research projects, each with around twenty members (all Japanese except for one Nepali scholar based in Japan). In its preparatory stage, seminars were held as part of a regular research project of the Institute of Oriental Culture, the University of Tokyo 'Reconsidering Anthropological Studies in the Northern Part of South Asia' organized by Katsuo Nawa in 2002. In 2003, an ILCAA research project entitled 'Comparative Study of Sociocultural Changes: On Changes in Northern South Asia' was organized by Hiroshi Ishii. David Gellner joined ILCAA as a visiting research scholar in September 2003. The idea of the international workshops emerged during occasional discus-sions between them. The main aim of the projects was to achieve a better understanding of the societies and cultures of northern South Asia focusing on various aspects of change in the region.