Resolving ethno-national conflicts: Contested Lands by Sumantra Bose
Introduction Ethno-national conflicts are amongst the most powerful and persistent features of global politics. The pattern usually is one side attempts to establish complete dominion over a part of its territory populated by a different people who view it as alien intrusion into their homeland. The stronger side responds to dissent with repression deepening the hostility harboured by the repressed against their oppressor and sparking in them an urge to break away. This urge transforms over time into a staunch demand for freedom and self-determination. Mutual antagonism then breaks out into an all-out war which doesn’t end immediately, but prolongs for many years and even decades. If one probes into the reasons behind the instances of many ethno-national wars across the world, one finds that in several cases two peoples who define themselves in opposition to each other are forced to live together. Most of these (although not all) occur in the post-colonial world where the colonial mas