Contextualizing Political Security in South Asia

This article examines four hypotheses. First, political security is a broader canvas that includes human security apart from state security. The political insecurity is perennial source of social and economic securities for human beings and an existential threat to the state at large. Second, the people and the states in the South Asian region are suffering from the syndrome of political insecurity. A major source of political insecurity is exclusive nationalism that has made the ideology of state, the most contested terrain and thereby undermined the basis of South Asian states leading to the crisis of legitimacy. Third, undemocratic political structures and fragile democratic structures have further complicated the security scenario by hampering the organizational stability of the state in the South Asian region. Fourth, the systemic dilemma of governments in South Asia is that the institutions of governance often bypass people already deprived on multiple counts and thereby not only drive such people towards political violence but also enhance the legitimacy deficit for the South Asian states.