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Secular nationalism, India?s official ideology and the basis for its secular Constitution, is being challenged by the rising religious nationalist discourses. This has resulted in an ongoing struggle between the secular and religious nationalist discourses. Since women are regarded as symbols of religious tradition and purity, the religious nationalist discourses subject them to increasing rules and regulations aimed at controlling their behavior to conform to the ideal of religious purity. In this study I examine the subject positions that the Hindu and Muslim nationalist discourses in India are constructing for "their women" and its implication for women's citizenship rights. I focus my research on two topics, where religious nationalist discourses intersect with the women's question in obvious ways. These are "the Muslim personal law" and "marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men". The Muslim personal law has emerged as the most important symbol of Muslim identity over the years, and holds an important position within the Hindu and the Muslim nationalist discourses as well as the secular discourse. The debates around the Muslim personal law are centered on questions of religious freedom and equal citizenship rights for Muslim women. The issue of marriages between Hindu women and Muslim men is located in the Hindu nationalist discourse?s larger theme pertaining to the threat that the Muslim "other" poses to the Hindu community/nation. I juxtapose the religious nationalist discourses with the secular nationalist discourse to understand how the latter is contesting and negotiating with the former two to counter the restrictive subject positions that the religious nationalist discourses are constructing for Hindu and Muslim women. The study is based on the content of debates taken from three mainstream English newspapers in India. Further, interviews with people associated with projects related to women rights and/or countering religious nationalism are used to supplement the analysis. The analysis is carried out using concepts from Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory. The analysis suggests that the subject positions being constructed by the religious nationalist discourses for Hindu and Muslim women, although different from each other, freeze them as subjects of religious communities, marginalizing or rejecting their identities as subjects of State with equal citizenship rights. The women rights and secular discourse counters this by offering a subject position with more agency and rights compared to the former two. However, it is increasingly getting trapped within the boundaries being set by the religious nationalist discourses. I argue that there is a need for women rights and secular discourse to break the boundaries being set by the religious nationalist discourses. In order to prevent the sedimentation of the meaning "women as subjects of community", the secular discourse needs to employ the vocabulary of liberal citizenship as rearticulated in feminist, pluralist terms.

The thesis aims to elucidate the factors which made it possible for the triumphant Bangalee nationalist movement expressed by the Awami League (AL) under the leadership of Mujib to fall from power and popular favour in the short space of three and half years. This entails some consideration of background features such as: Bangalee nationalism, the character of the AL, the legacies of the liberation war experience. Mainly, it calls for an inspection of the operations of various elements of the political system during the three and half years. The key element was the AL, dominant party from the moment of the emergence of the State. Therefore,· an examination of the AL and its affiliated organizations in the post-liberation period especially the working of the party at the local level had to be undertaken. The political system within which the AL functioned was in some degree one of its own making and attention therefore has to be given to the making (and changing) of the Constitution. At the same time, the AL though representative of the original nationalist movement, failed to win over the allegiance of all elements and thus opposition parties have to be examined to see what contributions they made to the direction of events. The bureaucracy becomes an important element in the polity during the three and half years and the army brings about the fall of the regime in 1975; the features of each of these institutions are set out in order to explain their roles. And finally an evaluation has been made of the performance of the government and its management of the various problems. The major findings of the study are as follows: Firstly, the factors antecedent to 1972 become manifest in the government and the party. Quite broad categories of people unaccustomed to administration shared the increasing expectations that were created by the nationalist movement especially in the course of the liberation war. But these expectations were disappointed. A period of total disillusionment followed due to the behaviour of those in power. Secondly, the disappointment of the people can not be attributed to any weakness that was inherent in Bangladesh. It can only be attributed to the failure of the ruling party. The actual conduct of the party and the government failed to mobilize and secure the support of the disillusioned. The AL which was a party of the urban middle class and the rural 'haves' found itself relying more heavily on certain richer peasants and did not seriously strive to cultivate the industrial workers. Thirdly, the AL was unable to exert political control. Its response and that of the government to popular resentment was expressed through the increasing use of force and strengthening of the institutions of force. This led to the isolation of the regime and it increasingly relied on the bureaucracy and the army. Thus an anomaly was created by drawing in the bureaucracy and the army into a system which had been designed as parliamentary democracy. The anomaly was removed by bringing about the fall of the regime and instituting direct military rule.

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This study examines the context and nature of British attitudes to China and the Chinese in the period 1928 to 1931, between the initial consolidation of the Nationalist Revolution in China and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria. The relationship between official and popular levels of this discourse provides the dominant theme of this work. It is argued that these years saw the start of a major long-term shift in British attitudes prompted by the Nationalist Revolution and by changes in Britain's official policy towards China. A wide range of official, institutional, and private primary and secondary material relating to Sino-British relations and to British treaty port life in China is examined in order to identify the sources, nature, and influence of British attitudes. The introduction surveys the existing literature on "attitudes" and "images" and outlines the limitations of traditionally textually-based approaches. Part 1 examines metropolitan and treaty port sources of British attitudes and their articulation and relates these to the structure and mores of British society in China, its socialisation of new arrivals, and its relations with the Chinese as hosts, competitors, colleagues, customers and employees. It shows the extent to which hostile and suspicious attitudes towards the Chinese pervaded British popular culture, diplomacy and treaty port society. Part 2 describes the nature and limitations of British attempts at social and institutional reform in the three main sectors of British society: the structures of treaty port life, businesses and missions. Although British residents accepted the need for reform, in practice they were insular and conservative. Furthermore, successful changes were introduced with the intention of protecting the British presence in China rather than changing its character. This work concludes, however, that genuine attempts were made in this period by influential individuals to alter the character of British treaty port life, and treaty port attitudes, and that the long-term repercussions of these efforts underlie improvements in Sino-British cultural relations since 1928. This study is a contribution to the social history of the foreign communities in China, the history of Sino-British relations and the social history of British attitudes to China and the Chinese.

Yes / Paul Schiemann’s name is well-known only in relatively small academic circles, for example among historians interested in Latvia, the Baltic states and German national minorities. He had formidable intellectual strength, clear moral vision and substantial personal courage, all of which enabled him to resist the rise of Nazism among German national minorities. This paper explains Schiemann’s world view, together with his attempts to promote values of tolerance and justice in the face of destructive nationalism.

The United States suffered a rather severe diplomatic defeat in the collapse of the Nationalist government of China following World War II. It may be possible, by reducing the policy to its essential elements, to determine if a course of action in one given component of the policy was correct or in error, or if it is the usual gray area--neither black nor white, neither totally correct nor totally in error--that defies a valid conclusion.