2019/04/03 by David Washbrook · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Anthropological Studies and Insights #Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies #Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
paper · doi:10.1080/13621025.2019.1603270
openalex publication_date 2019/04/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2025/11/06
Citizenship has generally been associated with institutions located firmly in the political history of ‘the West’. The state and governance in Asia, by contrast, are taken to have been dominated by ‘Oriental’ despotism and/or theocracy. As a result, citizenship in modern Asia may be alien, artificial and weakly rooted. Focusing closely on southern and western India, this paper challenges this perspective. Its argument centres on the existence from ‘medieval’ times of a series of institutions which, though certainly different from those in ‘the West’, performed many of the same ‘citizen-like’ functions. These functions were threatened by the rise of the early modern and colonial states, with their stronger traditions of bureaucracy and centralisation, but never entirely overcome. Their shadow continues to pattern India’s practices of citizenship today, giving it many of its distinctive characteristics.