Military establishments are omnipresent if not everywhere omnipotent. While these costly bureaucracies are the bane of finance ministers around the world, they do provide an important opportunity for comparative analysis. This paper examines a military system—the Indian one—through time, and attempts to demonstrate the changing relationship of that system to Indian politics and society in general, and to the low-caste communities of India in particular. We select the low-caste untouchables because they represent an extreme challenge to the integrative capacity of both political and social systems, and because they have recently been the subject of intensive political and academic concern.

Rohilkhand, at the time of the Mutiny of 1857, was a division of the North-Western Provinces comprising the districts of Bijnor, Moradabad, Budaun, Bareilly, and Shahjahanpur. It was here and in neighboring Oudh that the uprising achieved its greatest intensity. Hitherto, it has been assumed that the proprietary mutations which occurred in Rohilkhand after its cession in 1801 by the Nawab of Oudh to the East India Company are highly significant as a cause of the uprising. G. J. Christian, the Secretary to the Sudder Board of Revenue of the North-Western Provinces, reported in 1854 that “in no other country in the world probably do landed tenures so certainly, constantly, and extensively change hands. These mutations are effecting a rapid and complete revolution in the position of the ancient proprietors of the soil.” William Edwards, the Collector of Budaun at the time of the Mutiny, wrote:

To the large number of these sales during the past twelve or fifteen years, and the operation of our revenue system, which has had the result of destroying the gentry of the country … I attribute solely the disorganization of this and the neighbouring districts in these provinces. By fraud or chicanery, a vast number of the estates of families of rank and influence have been alienated, either wholly or in part, and have been purchased by new men … without character or influence over their tenantry. … I am fully satisfied that the rural classes would never have joined in rebelling with die sepoys … had not these causes of discontent already existed.

Japan provides a fascinating case for studying economic development. With her real GNP rising at an annual rate of 4 percent during the period 1878–1942, Japan was the only Asian country that emerged from a backward agrarian society to become a modern industrial power. Her postwar economic performance has been even more phenomenal; the average growth rate of real GNP in 1955–1964 was 10.4 percent—the highest in the world. Her investment rate reached an astonishingly high level of over 40 percent in several years in early nineteen sixties. Believing that there is no miracle in economic affairs, economists began to search the secrets of Japan's extraordinary achievements in economic development. To offer possible explanations, they usually stress the active role played by the Japanese government in economic modernization, the vigor of the country's response to new stimuli, and a strong national consciousness. These factors, while undoubtedly important, do not reveal the whole story. There are in Japan a number of institutional traits which, in my opinion, are highly conducive to economic growth. However, the contribution of these institutions to Japan's economic development has not been fully recognized because, in part, they were not designed for that purpose. Their growth-stimulating effects are accidental and unexpected. As a matter of fact, some of these institutions may even appear as economically irrational or socially unjust. Consequently, when students of the Japanese economy study these institutional factors, attention is usually directed to the negative side.

Chinese scholarship, in its quest for an explanation of the beginning of Sun Yat-sen's nationalist ideology, San-min chu-i (“The Three Principles of the People”), has yet to grapple with the complexity of his ideological makeup. Unfortunately, scholarship has been inhibited (and will probably continue to suffer, at least in the foreseeable future) a great deal by a certain persistent point of view in both Nationalist and Communist Chinas when it comes to the study of Sun Yat-sen as a whole. This inhibition has stemmed, in the main, from the fact that Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China, has thus far been regarded as someone to worship rather than someone to study with a critical mind.

On August 20th, 1917, Edwin Montagu declared in the House of Commons that: “the policy of His Majesty's Government … is that of the … gradual development of self-governing institutions with a view to the progressive realization of responsible government in India as an integral part of the British Empire.” This announcement, more than any other single event, may properly be described as signalling the creation of the Montagu-Chelmsford reforms and the breakup of the third British Empire. It affirmed that a nonwhite portion of the empire could aspire to the same goal of self-government as the white colonies of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa had successively achieved.

In September 1965, there occurred between the armies of India and Pakistan a fierce clash which each side attributed to the aggressive designs of the other. This undeclared war lasted only a short time; first a ceasefire ordered by the United Nations, and later the pact signed at Tashkent, brought the hostilities to a formal close. It was by no means a spontaneous or unexpected flareup, the hatred and antagonism that caused it had been festering for a long time. Similarly, its effects have not been short-lived; neither have they been restricted to the area of military logistics and high diplomacy. In this paper I intend to review the consequences of that conflict for Urdu language and literature. I shall proceed by showing why it was necessary for Urdu writers, especially the poets, to respond to this war, and what sort of attitudes were displayed in the poetry written exclusively in response to it. I shall then discuss certain subsequent developments in the general area of Urdu language and literature and end by presenting my own conclusions with regard to the future.

Studies on social and political change tend to emphasize factors promoting change rather than factors maintaining or reenforcing an existing or a “traditional” social and political system. Among the topics studied from this point of view in Ceylon are the “disintegrating village” (Sarkar and Tambiah 1957), the caste system, a “system in transition” (Ryan 1953), the impact of population growth and colonial legislation on “land tenure in Village Ceylon” (Obeyesekere 1966 and Leach 1961), the development of a western political system and the newly “emerging elite” (Singer 1964), and the impact of industrialization and economic development on the Ceylonese community and caste structure and the “emergence of a class of industrial entrepreneurs” (Evers 1964). In all these booklength studies traditional Sinhalese institutions and values are depicted as distintegrating under the pressure of various factors of change and only limited attention is paid to institutions which effectively counteract westernization, modernization, and possibly change. It is perhaps interesting to note that in line with this way of arguing, the renaissance of Buddhism and the emergence of a strong Buddhist Sinhalese nationalism is viewed as a reaction to western influences rather than an autonomous development of Sinhalese society and culture.

Six hundred miles west of Hang-chou the Yangtze River emerges from a mountain corridor onto the lowland plain of south-central China. Here the river bed widens sharply and loses depth; the Yangtze winds a snake-like path across a thousand miles of rich, flat, water-laced country, northeastward to Han-yang, then south toward the Po-yang Lake, north again to Chiang-ning (modern Nanking), and finally into the East China Sea at modern Shanghai. Medieval Chinese called it simply “River”—a River among rivers, the designation of an entire S-shaped area whose character depended more on water than on land, the dominant feature of the southern landscape. In the twelfth century this river region developed a strategic importance as it became first the refuge for a besieged court, then an area of contention with barbarian invaders, and finally the principal artery of Chinese control. This transformation reflected a major reorientation of the Chinese mind.

Few features of modern South Asian history have received more comment than communalism, its impact on the development of nationalism and its threat to the continued existence of a secular Indian state. For many supporters of Indian nationalism, communalism was the result of British machinations, of a “divide and rule” policy used to impede and, finally, to frustrate the ambitions of those who desired a free, united India. For the proponents of Pakistan, communalism was not an issue, since they premised their actions on the concept of “two nations,” one Hindu and one Islamic, which both sought to establish themselves as political entities. Their world was defined by religion and what others called communalism was nationalism in such a world. Communalism exists as a historic reality and a common though ambiguous and increasingly pejorative analytic concept.

By the spring of 1966, it was abundantly clear in New Delhi that the Third Five Year Plan was a failure. Over the five year period (1961–66), the rate of increase in national income was less than half the projected level. Per capita income showed no increase at all. At the same time, prices for all commodities rose by over one half. The price index for foodgrains climbed by more than 56 per cent. By 1966, food shortages were so severe that some thirty million persons in major cities and towns were placed under statutory rationing. Another two hundred million—over one-third the population—were brought under partial rationing schemes. Even so, the general price index rose by another 38 per cent in 1967. Once again, foodgrains took the lead with a price increase of 44 per cent.

The ch'ing dynasty (1644–1911) was the last and most successful of the dynasties of alien rule in China. “The key to its success,” noted Professor Ping-ti Ho, “was the adoption by early Manchu rulers of a policy of systematic sinicization.” The integration of the Manchu ruling class with their Chinese subjects was most striking in staffing the bureaucracy. Unlike preceding alien dynasties, the Manchus over the course of 268 years of rule shared a good proportion of key offices with Chinese. The system of dual appointments of Manchus and Chinese operated in the capital, while Chinese dominated the local officialdom.

China's defeat in the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 not only revealed to the world the weakness of the Celestial Empire, but also raised a number of critical problems for the Imperial government, none more complicated than that of protecting foreign missionaries. The missionary problem had already become a diplomatic headache in the latter part of the nineteenth century, after the Treaty Powers had forced the Chinese government to recognize the right of Christian missionaries to establish missions far in the interior of China where they were exposed to attacks by hostile Chinese. As greater numbers of missionaries penetrated the interior, antimissionary outrages occurred with disturbing and increasing frequency, bringing forth bitter complaints from the foreign community in China about the inability of the Powers to force the Imperial government to provide protection. The customary demand of the Powers when outrages occurred had been for protection of their nationals, reparations for lives lost and property destroyed, and punishment of provincial officials who had been unable or unwilling to prevent outrages. Frequently there had been a resort to “gunboat diplomacy,” when the Powers rushed naval vessels to cities where riots threatened or occurred to protect foreigners and overawe local officials.

One of the most striking phenomena in early twentieth-century China is her rapid adaptability to modern nationalism. Viewed from the events of the period 1902 to 1911, this newly emerged spirit was expressed in many ways, and China's response to foreign investment in her mining industry was certainly one index of them. Indeed, this response had fully developed into a national movement in which China's major purpose was first to confront the established interests of foreign powers in China, and second, to implement what later proved to be an unsuccessful program of industrialization under her own control, with heavy emphasis on mining and railway development. However, the development of the spirit, in this phase, did not constitute an overall defiance of the treaty system which consisted of unequal terms and served as the foundation of Sino-foreign relations. China's objective was basically a negative one and had only limited positive perspective.

Japan controlled Taiwan from 1895 to 1945, longer than the United States ruled the Philippines, and sent more of its people to live in that colony. The pervasive impact of Japanese colonial rule helped insure a continuing Japanese influence in postwar Taiwan. “The dogs treated us better than the pigs,” was a common Formosan phrase heard by the writer in 1961–64 to denote the invidious comparison between Japanese and Nationalist Chinese rule. This article will discuss the trend of official relations between Japan and Nationalist China since their bilateral peace treaty in 1952; Japanese leadership views obtained through interviews with government, opposition, and bureaucratic specialists; and attitudes of public and various interest groups in Japan toward Formosa.

Nonalignment today is a protean international phenomenon, accommodating a host of national impulses and identities. This paper, however, is chiefly concerned with this phenomenon as it was nurtured on Indian soil: it seeks to interpret India's nonalignment by probing its rationale as a security policy during the Nehru years.

The pages that follow attempt to answer two questions: (1) why was it that the issue of India's security evoked a particular type of response which came to be identified as nonalignment; and (2) what were the peculiar characteristics of this identity?

A large number of us who are here today in 1969 remember the early beginnings of our organization. I remember particularly a small gathering of one of our earlier incarnations in John Fairbank's livingroom discussing our problems, when we were so small that Wilma Fairbank could send out the postcard notices of meetings without any secretarial help. We are now old enough to have acquired traditions, one of which is the rotation of the presidency from China to South East Asia to Japan to South Asia and then round again. By a fortunate chance the turn of South Asia falls this year on the centenary of the birth of the greatest of South Asians of modern times. Another of our traditions is that the president should deliver an address on a topic close to his own special interest—in my case the history of modern India. I am, however, going to deviate somewhat from that practice this afternoon. In closing, I shall make some suggestions which I hope all of us will keep in mind in this new era of Asian history which is now upon us.