Ever since India achieved independence in 1947, scholars of Indian politics have tried to understand how exactly this incredibly diverse country, with its sprawling collection of distinct linguistic, religious, and caste groups, has survived as one nation. A common answer has been India's ethnofederalism: in 1956 the government reorganized states on the basis of language. But ethnolinguistic conflict continues unabated in India today, and—more perplexingly—sometimes the center accommodates these demands and at other times it represses them. What explains these patterns of interaction? Bethany Lacina's Rival Claims seeks to answer these questions with a novel theory: “the electoral relationship between these opponents of autonomy [i.e., in the periphery] and the prime minister dictates whether the center represses or accommodates ethnoterritorial demands” (p. ix).
Lacina's theory hinges on the real debate not being between center and periphery, but “Center versus Periphery versus Periphery” (p. 23). She correctly notes that the periphery itself is divided between pro- and anti-autonomy groups. She then makes four arguments about how ethnoterritorial demands will occur given this triadic relationship. First, when the prime minister's government has equal representation from pro- and anti-autonomy interests, local politicians will build militant autonomy movements to take advantage of this uncertainty. Second, the center is likely to grant this autonomy if pro-autonomy groups are important electorally. Third, violent pro-autonomy movements are unlikely if a state's largest ethnic group has ample representation in the prime minister's government (i.e., pro-autonomy interests know they will lose in this struggle). Finally, states without autonomy movements adopt more majoritarian policies, but state governments will be more discriminatory if the largest ethnic group in the state is well represented in the prime minister's government. Lacina then evaluates and confirms these arguments using case studies—for example, the Andhra crisis, Khalistan, and the Hill State Movement, among others.
This book contains many intriguing ideas. It challenges the assumption that national elites have a “fixed preference for centralization” (p. 6), and it also problematizes the idea of a simple dyadic relationship between the center and periphery. There is a nice mix of both quantitative analysis—including some excellent and dogged data collection on Lok Sabha debates in chapter 6—and a wide variety of qualitative case studies. Lacina also writes in a personal style, which I enjoyed, such as when she begins the book by tying together ethnoterritorialism with discussions of several Indian Idol contestants from northeast India.
Lacina's theory also prompts some interesting questions. If, for example, opposing interests in the periphery can be broken down into pro- and anti-autonomy groups, shouldn't this also be the case with regard to the central government? In other words, Lacina has disaggregated the periphery but not the center. Instead of a triadic relationship, is the real relationship four-sided: government/opposition in the center versus pro-/anti-autonomy interests in the periphery? This matters because, as Lacina notes, in 1999 the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) promised federal reorganization, and in 2000 it subsequently created several new states (p. 65). Did the BJP's opposition status during the previous Congress government affect periphery demands? Were elites in the periphery basing their decisions with a mind toward the 1999 election results? Another area to be explored is whether all kinds of ethnoterritorial claims should be lumped together (as they are in this book). If the work of David Laitin and Steven Wilkinson is right, then linguistic mobilization should be less violent than other ethnic mobilizations, yet in India we see many attempts to create new states on the basis of language. Why is this the case? These questions should provide some interesting fodder for other scholars to explore in future work.
The main weakness of Rival Claims is in its haphazard organization. This is a problem both across and within chapters. In chapter 2, for example, we are given four hypotheses (written in the standard social scientific format of H1, H2 …) but the first two hypotheses are not tested until chapter 4 and the last two not until chapter 8. By that point, the reader could be forgiven for not remembering these hypotheses or what motivated them. Several of the chapters proceed in reverse chronological order; for example, chapter 5 is about Punjabi separatism (1980s) but then chapter 6 goes back in time to the formation of Maharashtra and Gujarat (1950s). Perhaps part of the problem is that the book does not have an explicit case selection strategy, so the analysis comes off as disorganized. Within chapters there are similar problems: one is the use of an inordinate amount of subheadings (nineteen in chapter 3), some of them for sections that are barely a paragraph long, which results in a very staccato read. And at six pages in length, the conclusion seems to be an afterthought. Unfortunately, all of this detracts from Lacina's otherwise interesting analysis.
These problems notwithstanding, Rival Claims is an important book that offers a novel theory about both ethnofederalism and whether central governments will accommodate or repress these demands. It should provoke discussion among scholars and policymakers interested in Indian politics, ethnic politics, federalism, and insurgency.
