|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
THE long and continuous tradition of Rama-Katha existed in many folk and oral forms before Adikavi Valmiki composed it in Sanskrit in written form as the Ramayana, "a book of divine harmony...a bottomless and shoreless ocean of love, piety and clemency." The subsequent centuries witnessed composition of Ramayana in many Indian languages like Tamil, Malyalayam, Bengali, Assamese, Hindi, Kashmiri, Gujarati and Marathi among others. These versions share many similarities and dissimilarities among them, even though their epicentral concerns remains the same. Comprising more than a dozen articles by distinguished scholars on the Ramayana, in different Indian languages. The volume would facilitate a greater understanding of its timeless appeal down the ages.
MOST South Asian countries — following independence from British rule in the late 1940s, and in the case of Nepal, liberation from the autocracy of one family group in 1950 — have enjoyed democratic systems of governance at least at some time or the other, often for extended periods of time, and, in a few cases, over the course of their post-independence history. Electoral processes have, however, been found wanting to greater or lesser extents in all these countries. Electoral malpractices are of critical concern to all South Asian countries. It is in this background that the International Centres from Ethnic Studies, Kandy. Sri Lanka, with funding from the Ford Foundation, organised in 2002 an international conference on electoral processes and governance in South Asia. The South Asian countries selected for study were Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and papers were presented by experts in the area of electoral processes and governance in these countries. This book based on the papers originally presented at that conference, seeks to understand electoral processes as they actually operate in South Asia, to discuss the reasons for the flaws in these systems and the degrees of success or failure in attempts at reform.
|
||
|
|
||
Ramayana Through the
Ages
Electoral Processes and
Governance in South Asia