includes index and biblioraphy

South Asia, home to nearly one-sixth of the world`s population, is currently in the focus of considerable academic attention. The emergence of India as one of the fastest-growing economies in the world has further sharpened the international focus on the most culturally diverse region in the world and at the same time, the site of a longstanding process of cultural hybridization and symbiosis. The region has witnessed, over the past several cunturies as well as in recent years, highly significant and complex process of ethnicization, identity-construction and ethnic conflict. The present volume hopes to make a modest contribution to the study of South Asia in the context of its pervasive diversity and complexity and the interface between change and continity.