"Domestic conflict in South Asia / edited by Urmila Phadnis, S.D. Muni and Kalim Bahadur" V.1

The States of the South Asian region have been in throes of a systemic flux and in each of the seven States, there is a disquiet in varying degree of intensity. In most of them, the legitimacy, credibility and efficacy of the prevailing systems of government have come under severe strain and if one Were to look for a common denominator which will explain the situation, it is a quest for a
participatory pattern of political framework. The present struggle for democracy in Pakistan and Bangladesh, the violent eruption of ethnic tensions in Sri Lanka and the increasing strains on federal and secular components of the Indian polity underline the
complex configuration of conflict in the South Asian States.

The gamut of domestic conflicts in South Asian States thus has implication for present and future policies on two significant counts: 1) the experiences of the various South Asian States in dealing with systemic challenges in their own specific ways; 2) the spill over effect of the domestic crisis in intra-regional and trans-regional terms. A perusal of such tendencies necessitates indepth studies of the nature of State as much as the institutions of power and authority at various levels in a systemic and
comparative framework.