There is no dearth of literature on Indian federalism. From the pioneering scholarship of Jyotirindra Das Gupta to the recent contributions of Louise Tillin, the literature has demonstrated how the Indian state, regardless of regime, has managed to cope with these demands through institutional mechanisms involving the redrawing of internal boundaries. Indeed, it can legitimately be argued that the absence of substantial violence in India associated with linguistic agitation is one of the dogs that has not barked. Since the passage of the States Reorganization Act of 1956, the country has, for the most part successfully, staved off demands that could have rent it apart. Today, India has 29 states, many of which were carved out of larger entities and, on occasion, as a consequence of the merger of adjacent territories.

That said, the country is no stranger to various forms of ethno-religious violence stemming from demands for increased autonomy, if not outright secession. Many of these violent movements are territorially based, and the responses of the Indian state to their demands have been mostly consistent. It has proven willing, with marked exceptions, to come to terms with demands for local autonomy as long as the movements have eschewed secessionist demands. The one striking exception, of course, has involved the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir. Despite much discussion, endless rounds of negotiations with various parties in the state, and with cycles of repression and accommodation, the Indian government has failed to fashion a lasting accord that would grant a degree of autonomy to the state. In considerable part, the unwillingness of any national government in India to cede ground stems from the region’s contested status. Specifically, harking back to the time of the partition of the British Indian Empire in 1947, Jammu and Kashmir has been the subject of a Pakistani irredentist claim.

Bethany Lacina’s Rival Claims offers a more complex argument about how India has sought to use territorial autonomy to manage ethnic demands than is the case in current scholarship. At the outset, the author makes clear that her argument challenges the common assumption that these tensions can be reduced to mere center-periphery conflicts. On the contrary, she argues that a triangular relationship among the central government and regional rivals explains whether federal institutional arrangements succeed or fail in containing ethnic violence.

The book represents an important contribution to the extant scholarship on federalism, ethnicity and political violence in India. It is significant for a number of compelling reasons. At the outset, Lacina spells out an explicit theoretical argument that challenges much conventional scholarship. Furthermore, the book is based upon detailed and granular fieldwork at a number of important sites in India. Finally, she demonstrates a substantial knowledge of the historical trajectory and evolution of a number of these conflicts. Each of these themes deserves some discussion.

Lacina clearly locates her argument in a preexisting stream of literature on the subject. Her summary and analysis of this literature are succinct, fair-minded, and deft. Having summarized and critiqued the current scholarship, she proceeds to spell out her preferred explanation. She contends that competing interests in the periphery mostly explain when movements for ethnic autonomy turn violent and when they succeed. Furthermore, she asserts that the central government’s ties with various rival claimants in considerable part determine its responses to movements for autonomy. In making this argument, she challenges earlier scholarship, especially that of a noted scholar of Indian politics Paul Brass, who sought to explain various autonomist movements as the result of the centralizing propensities of particular national governments.

Lacina’s discussions of the cases, both recent and historical, are impressive. For example, she demonstrates an extraordinary grasp of the complex politics of the Gorkhaland movement in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal. In this analysis, she carefully applies her theoretical framework to show how the central government responded to demands for greater autonomy in a region of the state with a distinct linguistic heritage. Contrary to popular accounts of center-periphery struggles, she shows that the frustration of local actors was not directed at New Delhi but toward the regional government in West Bengal. More to the point, intraethnic tensions were at the forefront of this movement.

The analyses of the historical cases, about which much had been previously written, is also quite sound, even if they do not break new historical ground. For example, the author’s analysis of the factors that led to the creation of the state of Andhra Pradesh (as well as the famous States Reorganization Act of 1956) shows a supple grasp of the pertinent historical material. She shows how “nuisance violence” within the state contributed to India-wide concern and then led to concessions for local autonomy.

The sanguinary Punjab insurrection of the 1980s, which ultimately culminated in a mostly military solution and virtually no concessions to the separatists, is also one of Lacina’s cases. Unlike previous scholarship on the subject, which had emphasized the role of the prerogatives of the central government, she argues, quite counterintuitively, that the negotiations failed largely because the national government could not bring itself to alienate regional allies. Once again, Lacina’s recapitulation of the forces that led up to the crisis are quite sound and evinces an ability to adroitly distill the key findings of previous scholarship.

Despite the many laudable features of Rival Claims, Lacina, quite curiously, does not provide an explicit rationale for the selection of her cases. This absence is an odd omission in a work that is otherwise quite sensitive to other basic methodological canons. This shortcoming aside, the book clearly represents an invaluable contribution to the substantial corpus of existing scholarship on ethnic conflict, violence, and federalism in India. Her ability to combine historical detail, theory, and evidence garnered from extensive fieldwork is downright impressive. Those interested in these issues will benefit significantly from a careful perusal of this work.