Contents: Introduction. I. Gender and History: 1. Gendered agendas: fifty years of the women's movement in India & Pakistan/Dolores Chew. 2. Florence nightingale and the Indian National Congress/Marc Jason Gilbert. 3. Madame Cama--a brave daughter of India (1861-1936)/Pushpa Lakhdive. 4. Women in reformist and nationalist movement in colonial India/Manisha Dikholkar. 5. Men in Bharata Natyam/Anne-Marie Gaston. II. The Social and the Political: 6. The intimacies and the enmities: shades of Saffron in Ashis Nandy/Radhika Desai. 7. Fragmenting the nation: erasing the social in imagined communities/Judy Whitehead. 8. Advertising in India: the nationalism in multinationalism/Vinu G. Warrier. 9. India's 'New Farmers' Movements': the Bhartiya Kisan Sangh of Gujarat/Jason Liggett. 10. Interventions in the discourse of development at the self-employed womens association/Virginia Appell.

III. India : Retrospect and Prospect: 11. Shared sovereignty and federalism: some conceptual arguments/Reeta Chowdhari Tremblay. 12. Between mercantilist socialism and liberalism, 1956-1990: the vicissitudes in the life of the Nehru-Mahalanobis strategy/Baldev Raj Nayar. 13. The changing nature of India's Parliament/Arthur G. Rubinoff. 14. Indian democracy: a fifty year assessment/M.V. Naidu. 15. Conversion and propagation in independent India: the constituent assembly debates/Ronald Neufeldt. IV. Pakistan: Restrospect and Prospect: 16. The political economy of Pakistan: effects of institutional and cultural embeddedness on development/Faisal Bari. 17. Security dynamics between India and Pakistan: history and future prospects/Ashok Kapur. 18. The systemic sources of India's and Pakistan's proliferation decision/Julian Schofield. V. Ecological Issues: 19. Human rights and environmental rights: their compatibility in the context of sustainable development/O.P. Dwivedi. 20. Nutrition vs. taste--meet the Soya challenge/R.P. Gupta. VI. India-Canada Relations: Academic Views: 21. Canada-India relations: the current issues/John R. Wood. 22. The nature and scope of the Canada-India relationship/W.M. Dobell. 23. Emerging trends in regional cooperation in South Asia/Elliot L. Tepper. 24. The Shastri summer programme in India: training scholars for the 21st century/Margot Wilson-Moore. Diplomatic Views: 25. India and Canadian foreign policy/Geoffrey Pearson. 26. The future of Canada-India relations/John Hadwen. Index.

"The book is the outcome of an International Conference on South Asia. "India and Pakistan: 50 Years of Independence: Assessment and Prospects", held at Carleton University, Ottawa in August 1997, and sponsored by the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute and the South Asia Council of the Canadian Asian Studies Association, actively supported by South Asia partnership and local South Asia community organisations based in the Ottawa region. One of the objectives of the Conference was to seek out some well-known and distinguished South Asian scholars across Canada to analyse and reflect on the challenges and achievements of two major South Asian nations--India and Pakistan over the last fifty years of their independent existence.

"The contributions to this volume cover a wide variety of critical areas and policy issues in the Indian sub-continent concerning social movements, democracy, political institutions, political economy, ecological agenda, political and social discourse and India-Canada relations. For coherence and thematic unity, the essays have been grouped into six major sections: Gender and History; the Social and Political; India: Retrospect and Prospect; Pakistan: Retrospect and Prospect; Ecological Issues; and India-Canada Relations. The main thrust of the resultant compendium has been to make a penetrating and objective analysis of the major vicissitudes in the socio-political and economic development of India and Pakistan, as also in the evolution of their mutual relations and India's relations with Canada. The last section in India-Canada relations is of particular significance both for scholars and policy-makers, as it contains among others, the views of two distinguished former Canadian diplomats, who have examined critically the current status of India-Canada Foreign policies and the future of India-Canada relations. The book not only provides a better and a deeper understanding of the various complex and sensitive issues in the evolution of the Indian subcontinent over the last fifty years, but also presents an appropriate perspective on some of the controversial matters interfacing India, Pakistan and Canada." (jacket) 

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