Digital Commons Network^™

Symbiotic Suppression: How Digital Authoritarianism Helps Facilitate Physical Repression In Indian Controlled Kashmir, Patrick Aaron White

Honors College

Within the scholarship of authoritarianism, there is a growing assumption that as a regime’s access to digital means of repression increases, use of violence and other forms of physical state repression will be replaced and decrease. However, since India’s revocation of Kashmir’s special semi-autonomous status in August 2019, the nature of the ensuing crackdown has suggested that this understanding of modern repression may be incomplete—especially in light of India’s extensive use of the digital tactics that purportedly facilitate this transition. Through examining a broad collection of Kashmiri activist, survivor, journalist, and NGO accounts since August 5, 2019, this thesis contends …

India’S Nuclear Energy Conundrum: An Assessment Of The Country’S Energy Futures, Sneha Thomas

Undergraduate Honors Theses

This thesis will assess the practicality of implementing nuclear energy into India’s power system by considering different security risks, political factors, and COVID-19 complications. Access to energy is essential to modern survival because it contributes to the safety, success, and overall well-being of individuals; allowing for a better acquisition of food, education, and industry necessities. A big concern for India has been the inability to give energy access to millions of citizens that live in no proximity to a power grid, and this has shown to correlate with a lower quality of life. Another concern for India is the search …

Gender And Parliamentary Representation In India: The Case Of Violence Against Women And Children, Sadhvi Kalra, Devin K. Joshi

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

To better understand how gender impacts parliamentary representation, we analysed representative claims made by parliamentarians in India, the world's largest democracy. Applying critical frame analysis to plenary debates in the Indian Rajya Sabha, we examined four parliamentary bills addressing violence against women and children under four successive governments between 1999 and 2019. Testing six hypotheses concerning who represents and how, our study found women legislators more active in speaking on behalf of women and children than male legislators. Women parliamentarians focused more on rehabilitating victims and expanding the scope of rights and rights-holders. Women were also more vocal in contesting …

"The Aftermath Of Terrorism: The Islamophobic Rhetoric Of Donald Trump And Narendra Modi", Joshua Jonathan Somrah

Senior Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to compare the Islamophobic rhetoric of Trump after the 2015 San Bernardino Attack and the 2016 Orlando Nightclub Shooting with the Islamophobic rhetoric of Modi after the 2016 Uri Attack and the 2019 Pulwama Attack and to analyze how the Anti-Muslim rhetoric of Trump and Modi affected the lives of Muslims within their countries and abroad. I argue that Trump and Modi used Anti-Muslim language in the wake of the four terrorist attacks mentioned above for their own political agendas, which resulted in Anti-Muslim political decisions that affected the lives of many Muslims within …

Hinduism As A Political Weapon: Gender Socialization And Disempowerment Of Women In India, Aindrila Haldar

Master's Theses

There is a growing use of religion as a political tool to control Hindu women in India, contributing to a rise in gender inequality. Immediate authoritative patriarchal domains such as household and politics, continuously speak of “protecting” Hindu women by disregarding their voices and needs. Consequently, potentially creating a loss of agency among women. This research will use inductive reasoning to understand the position of Hindu women in modern Indian society. Particularly, through the understanding of the involvement of religion in the political and household sphere. Hindu women are highly influenced by the expectations of what being an ”ideal” woman …

The Case Of Kashmir: Ethnic Mobilization And Insurgency, Kayla Hofmann

Politics Honors Papers

This paper analyzes ethnic identity and potential reasons for conflict through a constructivist lens. Using the case study of Kashmir, I explore the past and present events in the state and the salience of ethnicity, specifically Kashmiri Muslims and Indian Hindus.

Climate Migration: Evaluating The Conditions That Breed Conflict, Avery Dillon

Honors Thesis

The prediction that climate change will cause conflict is at its core based on the assumption that climate change will trigger resource scarcity, resulting in displaced peoples and potentially violent conflict. However, the empirical evidence supporting this phenomenon is highly uncertain and at times directly contradictory. In recent decades, some have claimed that climate change’s exacerbation of extreme weather events such as hurricanes, floods, and droughts have already played major roles in conflicts such as the Syrian Civil War (Selby 2019). Others directly dispute this direct effect, arguing instead that climate change has played only a minor role in influencing …

Upsurge Of The Bharatiya Janata Party In India, Anthony (Sungho) Choi

Student Publications

This research paper examines the development of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India since its establishment and its governance inside the country. The BJP is influenced by the ideals of Hindu nationalism, and such ideals can be visible through the party’s responses to critical issues, such as the ongoing Indo-Pakistani conflict over Kashmir and Jammu. This research paper reviews three issues that seem to be prominent in India and correlated to the influences of the BJP in the government: The Indo-Pakistani conflict, transformations of India’s economy, and religious discriminations.

Historical Geopolitics Of Kashmir: A Discourse Analysis Of Civilizational Framings, Thomas J. Liguori

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation attempts to locate the intractable issue of Kashmir within a global context. The global setting utilized here is constituted and shaped by multiple levels, none of which is purely discrete, and which act upon each other with differing degrees of salience. Taking a discourse analytic approach, political positions can be seen as activating (acting upon, mobilizing, or challenging) existing discursive material in a given political context and then deploying it. This dissertation aims to show how the Kashmir problem has: 1) come about; that is, how it has been constituted and the (discursive) contexts which shaped the available …

Bangladesh And India: The Domestic And International Repercussions Of Asymmetric And Securitized Hydro-Politics, Tamanna Ashraf

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

India, the second-most populous country in the world, is experiencing the worst water crisis in its history, and by 2030, 40% of Indians will lack access to drinking water. Equally concerning is Bangladesh’s situation, with 2.5 million people experiencing water shortage due to increased salinity. Both India and Bangladesh share 54 transboundary rivers in the larger Ganges Brahmaputra and Meghna (GBM) basin. Even though the two nations have signed multiple treaties on the Ganges River, disputes still take place over the Ganges and other transboundary rivers. Since this region of the world is facing an increasing population and water demand, …

Beyond The Coronavirus: Understanding Crises Of Social Reproduction, Smriti Rao

Economics, Finance and International Business Department Faculty Works

From a feminist political economy perspective, the unfolding of the coronavirus is a further reminder of the fundamental contradiction between a capitalist system that prioritizes profits, and a feminist ethic that prioritizes life-making or social reproduction. This paper argues for a more systematic understanding of crises of social reproduction under capitalism, stressing the difference between such crises for labour, and those for capital. The coronavirus crisis represents an extraordinary example of a crisis of social reproduction for capital, but this paper examines crises of social reproduction for capital and labour that arise from the more ordinary workings of capitalism. The …

Tracing Biometric Assemblages In India’S Surveillance State: Reproducing Colonial Logics, Reifying Caste Purity, And Quelling Dissent Through Aadhaar, Priya Prabhakar

Scripps Senior Theses

Tracing Biometric Assemblages in India’s Surveillance State seeks to understand the historical conditions that rendered the nation-state of India as having the world’s largest biometric surveillance system: Aadhaar. Surveillance practices used by the British Raj mirrors the current social order of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), as they use surveillance to similar ends in today’s political economy, through the intersecting forces of neoliberalism and ethnonationalism. This thesis is an exploration into how India’s current surveillance regimes cultivate biometric surveillant assemblages through Aadhaar. Contrary to claims that Aadhaar was created to empower the poor, I argue that these surveillance regimes …

Trickle Down Nationalism: Interactions Between Liberal Nationalism And Colonialism In The Raj And Nigeria, Aaryaman Sheoran

CMC Senior Theses

The combination of nationalism and colonialism has remained understudied in academia, despite the important interaction between the two phenomena. European ideas bled over into their colonial empires and began to fill the power vacuum created by colonial enterprises. This study analyzes the impact of British colonialism on the development of national identity in British India and Nigeria.

British influences included large scale economic disruption, cultural reform through ‘westernizing’ the population and abolishing local customs, and creating a new set of institutions to replace traditional power centers. Inevitably, these factors created a nationalist surge across both the Raj and Nigeria, as …