Commissioned Book Review: Heewon Kim, The Struggle for Equality: India’s Muslims and Rethinking the UPA Experience
| Published date | 01 November 2020 |
| Date | 01 November 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920919606 |
| Subject Matter | Commissioned Book Reviews |
Political Studies Review
2020, Vol. 18(4) NP15 –NP16
journals.sagepub.com/home/psrev
Commissioned Book Review
919606PSW0010.1177/1478929920919606Political Studies ReviewCommissioned Book Review
book-review2020
Commissioned Book Review
The Struggle for Equality: India’s Muslims
and Rethinking the UPA Experience by
Heewon Kim. Cambridge Publications,
New Dehli, 2019. 260 pp., $76.50, ISBN
1108640885, 9781108640886
Abundant literature exists that explores
the question of religious minorities in
India, in particular Muslims. However, the
book: The struggle for equality: India’s
Muslims and rethinking the UPA experi-
ence, published by Cambridge University
Press, 2019, ISBN: 9781108416108, 260
pages for $76.50 stands out from the exist-
ing works on two major counts.
First, the methodology employed by
the book makes a fresh intervention in
understanding the state of minorities in
India and the response patterns of the
state. Second, the implicit hypothesis cen-
tres the question of religious minority
beyond the domain of electoral politics. It
instead explores other variables to under-
stand the limitations of the government in
responding to the demands of the religious
minority. Placing the central argument
first, Heewon Kim argues that political
incentives (p. 10) alone cannot explain the
reluctance of the United Progressive
Alliance (UPA) government to implement
new initiatives generated by its policy
process.
The book attempts to ask the follow-
ing: what were the political considera-
tions that led the UPA to adopt policies to
promote substantive equality of opportu-
nity for religious minorities, especially
Muslims? How were these policies for-
mulated, did they mark a radical break
with the previous experience of the Indian
state? To what extent did they represent a
paradigm shift? Also, implicitly, has
electoral politics designed the matrix of
structural response in plural societies. Or
does the way structures have come to
work, render electoral politics towards
the peripheries, despite being the axis of
Liberal democracy.
Building on an institutional policy
analysis, this methodological intervention
combines neo-institutionalism with his-
torical institutionalism to echo larger theo-
retical concerns. Employing a policy
analysis of UPA viz religious minorities,
in particular Muslims, the author provides
a perspective for situating the comparative
experience of minorities. Furthermore,
while evaluating the policy process, two
key areas – employment and service deliv-
ery – have been undertaken through the
methodological prism of institutional pol-
icy analysis. To map the institutional pat-
tern and outcome, the author relies on the
use of the concept of path-dependence,
across a distance travelled from contesta-
tional juncture to critical juncture. The
contestational juncture accentuates vari-
ous issues viz the state’s responses in form
of policies that were contested by the reli-
gious minorities, especially after mid-
1980s. The author understands critical
juncture through the constitution-making
process, wherein the dynamics emanating
from the partitioned led to certain provi-
sions and policy concerns, locking a cer-
tain path-dependence, which generated
the present structure vis-a-vis the question
of religious minorities. This is a work
which for the first-time sheds light on why
some policy options were pursued and
others left in abeyance.
Thus, more than electoral politics, resist-
ance to initiate policy reforms for minorities
came from other corners and constituencies.
To continue reading
Request your trial