Using new data on ethnicity and sub-national discrimination in India, national and state archives, parliamentary records, cross-national analysis and her original fieldwork, Lacina explains ethnoterritorial politics as a three-sided interaction of the center and rival interests in the periphery. Ethnic entrepreneurs use militancy to create national political pressure in favor of their goals when the prime minister lacks clear electoral reasons to court one regional group over another. Second, ethnic groups rarely win autonomy or mobilize for violence in regions home to electorally influential anti-autonomy interests. Third, when a regional ethnic majority is politically important to the prime minister, its leaders can deter autonomy demands within their borders, while actively discriminating against minorities.

Rival Claims challenges the conventional beliefs that territorial autonomy demands are a reaction to centralized power and that governments resist autonomy to preserve central prerogatives. The center has allegiances in regional politics, and ethnoterritorial violence reflects the center’s entanglement with rival interests in the periphery.

Acknowledgments

ONE Ethnicity, Territory, and Civil Violence

TWO Regional Interests, National Crisis

THREE Setting the Stage: Indian Federalism through the Present

FOUR Beyond Post Hoc Primordialism: Patterns in Ethnic Territorial Violence and Autonomy

FIVE Regional Opposition, Central Intransigence:Punjab’s Descent to War

SIX Nuisance Violence in Action: The 1956 Reorganization

SEVEN Different Opportunities, Different Tactics:The Hill State Movement

EIGHT Incumbent Regional Elites and Federal Stability

NINE Ethnoterritorial Conflict in Comparative Perspective

Conclusion: Ethnic Autonomy and the

Management of Territorial Conflict

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Index