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Internal Conflicts in South Asia. Edited by Kumar Rupesinghe and Khawar Mumtaz. London: Sage, 1996. Pp.xvii + 194. L39.50. ISBN 0 8039 7752 2
South Asia, a large geographical area inhabited by over one and a half billion people, is the most troubled region of Asia. India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, all but the last once part of British India, have been scarred by religious conflicts. Ethnic conflicts too have occurred in all of them with the qualified exception of Bangladesh. In India and Sri Lanka ethnic conflicts are tied to those of religion, and that adds a peculiar complexity to them. Thanks to modernisation, all four countries have also experienced regional, class, caste, and inter-gender tensions. These and related conflicts have regularly exploded into violence, with an annual toll of...