New posts on partition & IR, and liberal democracy
Bringing partition to IR. And some ways of thinking about liberal democracy and India.
Thank you for opening IR Wire.
Coming soon is a piece on what to keep in mind when using Kautilya’s Arthashastra.
But this email carries an update and a couple of links.
There are two new posts on IR Wire:
on partition
and on liberal democracy
Each contains a video — one of a public lecture and another of a recent conversation — along with text to add context.
The conversation is from a recent Puliyabaazi podcast with Khyati Pathak and Pranay Kotasthane. It covers a number of themes around India-Pakistan relations and their pre-history (during the late-colonial period). But perhaps more usefully for the academic lot, it presents a framework for making partition a useful analytic for IR.
Here’s the link:
An IR take on partition
A two-part conversation with Khyati P and Pranay Kotasthane for their Puliyabaazi Hindi Podcast on the looong shadow of partition on India-Pakistan relations. Details about the topics covered and their context are nicely presented on the Puliyabaazi
And the public lecture is on the future of liberal democracy. It was delivered two years ago in Mumbai, but since liberal democracy was recently invoked in a piece about India’s great power ambitions, I thought it was worth sharing with you. It hasn’t become dated in my assessment but risk an hour to see you for yourself.
Here’s the link:
What is a liberal democracy?
One of the signs of the times we are living in is that people desirous of progressive change dislike what is likely the least problematic of political systems geared towards the progress of humanity: liberal democracy.
Hope you enjoy the posts. Do send in your thoughts. And I hope it is a good week ahead for you.