Articles by Aswini K Ray

The civil and democratic rights movement in India, with its very obvious influences drawn from western democracies, had rather fortuitous beginnings in India. From a largely limited activist base from the emergency period of the 1970s, it has since moved into newer areas, with newer sources of support especially among more marginalised sections. But the movement, unlike its counterpart in the west, remains constantly challenged by prevailing complexities of the political process. The emergence of newer identities and shifting quality of these identities shaped by the very nature of politics and electoral processes in India coupled with the paucity of similar experiences in western liberal democracies, ensures that civil and democratic rights movement has to often formulate its own responses, make its own theoretical and conceptual innovations to meet such challenges.

A sense of history should help policy-makers in India and Pakistan to put into perspective their respective expectations of the US - as in any relationship among unequals - as the latter pursues its longterm global battle against 'international terrorism'. Our past experience provides ample grounds for caution.

The concepts of order and stability have enjoyed a higher priority than the idea of justice in the practice and the scholarship of international relations. This article attempts to demonstrate that such prioritisation is conceptually flawed, particularly during this era of globalisation. This article argues that international relations is relatively insensitive to the question of justice, both on the diplomatic plane and within the mainstream scholarly discourse on the subject. Historically, the guiding principles of international relations have been stability, predictability and order at the cost of justice. The article argues that this legacy is among its 'original sins'. It also explores, in the context of the ongoing process of globalisation, the abiding continuity of some of the recurrent 'sins' of international relations and the implications of this continuity for critical security. Suggestions for remedial action follow logically from this analysis.

India's New Secular Activism Exploding Some Myths Aswini K Ray COMMUNAL politics has always thrived off elemental passions based on myths and folklores around a perceived stereotype oppressor existential or historical

Civil Rights Movement and Social Struggle in India Aswini K Ray THE Civil Rights Movement, in its present shape, owes its origin to the political milieu of the National Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi for about nineteen months between 1975 and 1977. Even by the content porary moral standards of India's democratic norms,1 the politics of the Emergency era stands out as particularly amoral and, in terms of its long-term effects