M. K. Gandhi opposed the census enumeration of “untouchables,” or Dalits, as a separate group in the Census of 1931. As a “Hindu reformer” who fought against untouchability, Gandhi wanted to include “untouchables” within the larger political category of “Hindu.” Yet this view ran against the lived experiences of Dalits, who pointed to the hypocrisy of the political construction of “untouchables as Hindus” when they were systematically excluded, humiliated, and treated as less than human, and blocked from entry into temples—reinforcing the “line of untouchability” that separated “untouchables” from “caste Hindus.” Political scientist Vivek Kumar Singh describes the irreconcilability of this position, arguing that “untouchables could, therefore, neither enter the temple nor leave it.”

Ambedkar vehemently opposed Gandhi's position. Gandhi saw himself as representing “the vast mass of untouchables” and believed that “untouchables” should remain within the Hindu fold, while Ambedkar demanded self-representation for “untouchables” through separate electorates and reservations. Gandhi resisted both separate electorates and reservations and also argued that the census enumeration of “untouchables” as a separate community would further enhance caste divisions, instead of empowering “untouchables.” Gandhi's perspective in the 1930s strongly influenced Congress political leaders, who believed they were the legitimate political representatives of “untouchables” as one of many communities within the “Hindu majority” during negotiations with the British to “quit India.”

Gandhi's advice to a government committee on how “untouchables” should be enumerated in the census—as Hindus—highlights the embeddedness of census politics within the politics of representation and the distribution of political power in “decolonizing” India.

This chapter provides a detailed discussion of our “institutional peace” argument. Specifically, we propose that during the period of international order transition, the United States and China have employed a range of institutional balancing strategies that encompass both inclusive and exclusive approaches. These strategies are aimed at competing for leadership roles and the privilege to shape rules within and beyond the realms of international institutions. We underscore the significance of three positive externalities resulting from institutional balancing: the revitalization of institutions, the encouragement of regional cooperation, and competition in providing public goods. These externalities can contribute to a more peaceful transition within the international system, provided that the US and China engage in responsible competition under three crucial conditions: the maintenance of sustained nuclear deterrence, the continuation of deep economic interdependence, and the mitigation of ideological antagonism.

This book is born out of privilege. As a US-born member of the South Asian diaspora, my identity as a Syrian Christian has allowed me to benefit from inherited caste- and class-privilege. Syrian Christians are a “privileged minority” that falls within the roughly 8 percent of the population of India, which the 1980 Mandal Commission report identifies as “‘forward’ non-Hindu castes and communities.” My family origins in Kerala and upbringing in the United States have provided me with innumerable resources and sources of advantage.

In the lengthy period that I have taken to write this book, I have spent considerable time trying to make sense of my observational and interview data. I am indebted to the vast body of scholarship and related activism of towering figures such as Jotirao and Savitribai Phule, Iyothee Thass, and B. R. Ambedkar and continuing in more recent writings of historians, social scientists, and activists of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (detailed in my bibliography) that document the nature of caste hierarchy and its durability despite ongoing change and challenge. This scholarship has allowed me to contextualize my findings, despite my many blind spots, and pushed me to ask and answer questions about the institutional structures and ideologies that help to concentrate power and perpetuate gross inequalities and indignities across generations.

I am immensely grateful to the numerous people who shared their time and knowledge with me while I was conducting fieldwork in Bengaluru and other locations throughout India between 2011 and 2016. This project is only possible because of their generosity and patience. I am also extremely beholden to research assistance from Shalini Jamuna Kotresh, Arasi Arivu, and Devanshu Singh, who created a database of newspaper coverage, while Shalini also interviewed enumerated households. I am very appreciative for a research affiliation at the Institute for Social and Economic Change (ISEC) in Bangalore that provided me with an academic home while conducting fieldwork between 2012 and 2013.

This chapter offers a summary of our research findings on the upside of the US-China competition within the security, economic, and political suborders in the Asia Pacific region. In addition, we emphasize two primary challenges to achieving institutional peace in the region: the escalating power rivalry between the US and China, which can lead to proxy wars/conflicts, and the inclination toward irrational and risk-taking decisions by leaders in both nations, often influenced by domestic politics. While it remains the responsibility of the United States and China to prudently manage their strategic competition, we contend that the involvement of secondary states within the region can play a crucial and independent role in mitigating tensions between these two superpowers over critical issues, such as the Taiwan issue and the South China Sea disputes. Their active engagement is indispensable for fostering institutional peace within the Asia-Pacific.

“We were in disbelief that we won,” explained a caste census activist. After months of organizing, the campaign to include a caste-wise enumeration in Census 2011 had culminated in the Lok Sabha, or the lower house of Indian parliament, in early May 2010. The debate spanned three afternoon sessions in which nearly every speaker across the political spectrum supported the collection of caste-wise data in the upcoming decennial census. The leadership of the Indian National Congress Party (hereafter Congress), in power at the time through the coalition United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, found itself backed into a corner and reversed its long-standing opposition to a caste-wise enumeration in the census. A remark by prime minister Manmohan Singh at the end of the debate, followed by finance minister Pranab Mukherjee's comment to reporters the next day that “caste will be included in the present census,” publicly confirmed that the UPA government would collect caste-wise data in the census for the first time since independence. The finance minister reiterated the government's position during a trip to Chhindwara the following day when he told reporters, “[T]he caste-based census was last conducted in the year 1931 and the practice should have continued in post-independence period also but it did not happen. Now the UPA government has taken an initiative in this regard.” Decennial censuses in independent India have limited data collection to Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs)—two administrative categories consisting of Dalits, or “ex-untouchables,” and indigenous communities that have faced extreme indignities, violence, and structural exclusion—to determine the size of each group's affirmative action, or reservation, quota. Activists who had worked tirelessly for months to expand the caste-wise enumeration in the census were elated. Their coordinated campaign had involved public forums, conferences, speeches, rallies, and collaboration with political leaders to build a base of support at a time when both Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) opposed a caste count in Census 2011. Their success was tremendous given that since the 1950s, a range of commissions and organizations seeking to dismantle caste hierarchy had unsuccessfully advocated for the decennial census to collect and publish caste-wise data. Decades of effort finally met with success.

The East Asian community of states, having matured by the tenth century, thereafter continued to develop along somewhat independent trajectories. China settled into a distinctive late imperial form, characterized by the presence of an examination-recruited mandarin elite. Korea became more uncompromisingly Confucian; Vietnam gained independence; and Japan came to be dominated by uniquely Japanese warrior elites: the Shogun and samurai. China, under the Song Dynasty, became a major center of maritime trade and advanced technology. In the thirteenth century the Mongols erupted into East Asia, conquering China and reducing Korea to a subordinate “son-in-law” state. The Mongols, ironically, helped expose Koreans to Neo-Confucianism, and under increasing Confucian influence, Chinese-style family patterns became the new “tradition” in Korea. In Japan, conflict between leading warrior families resulted in the epochal Gempei War (1180–1185), from which Minamoto Yoritomo emerged victorious and became Japan’s first Shogun. By the end of this period, growing volumes of maritime trade ushered East Asia into the Early Modern age.

In the late eighteenth century, the British East India Company discovered that opium grown in colonial India sold well in China, where it was, however, illegal. Mounting tensions caused by the illegal trade led to an Opium War in 1840–1842, won by Britain and leading to the establishment of a “semi-colonial” treaty port system in China. Mid nineteenth-century China was also wracked by multiple rebellions, including the massive Christian Taiping Rebellion. Yet the Qing Dynasty not only survived but also experienced some revitalization. Meanwhile, in 1854 a U.S. Navy squadron pressured Japan to end its seclusion policy, and a similar treaty port system was established in Japan as well. In 1867 the last Shogun resigned, and in 1868 power was returned to the Japanese imperial government in the Meiji Restoration. Meiji Japan embraced rapid Westernization in the name of an allegedly primordial imperial line. Japan then pressured Korea into granting it treaty port privileges, and, after defeating China in a war fought over Korea, Japan eventually reduced Korea to an outright colony. Starting with the seizure of Saigon in 1859, Vietnam was colonized by France.

In August and September of 2017, as the monsoon left the province of Gujarat in India and the upcoming provincial election gathered steam, the slogan ‘vikas gando thayo chhe’ meaning ‘development has gone crazy’ became one of the most trending topics on social media. It was used to mock the poor state of development across the province. The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was taken by surprise because development was the territory in which they claimed to have delivered. Suddenly a campaign targeting them head-on, unexpected to say the least, was proving those claims to be hollow (Langa, 2017). It began spontaneously after a twenty-year-old engineering student posted some photographs of a dilapidated state-owned bus on Facebook (Langa, 2017) with a tagline: ‘Stay Away! Vikas has gone crazy in Gujarat’ (Langa, 2017). The post set off a conflagration of memes mocking the BJP's claim of development. People shared photographs as well as video clips of broken roads and bridges, rickety state-owned buses, garbage dumps on the streets, flooded roads, unfinished construction and records of swine flu-related casualties, all with the catchy tag line of ‘vikas’ (development). What helped was the fact that ‘Vikas’ is a common male name in Gujarati society. Hence, comments about ‘Vikas’ falling in love (HT Correspondent, 2017), getting lost, going mad or having his engagement cancelled because he had gone crazy, resonated (Akhtar, 2024). Adding to the humour and wit, the Hindu festival of Navaratri brought with it new songs on ‘vikas gando thayo chhe’.

The moment was both natural and political. The monsoon downpour of July-August washed away the BJP's roads and highways as well as their claims of world-class infrastructure. The opposition Indian National Congress Party (Congress hereon) latched on to this with the impending provincial assembly elections in December 2017. It became a major embarrassment for the BJP as the party's top brass was forced to respond. However, it was a tough task to create a narrative against the more relatable social media campaign that solely focused on issues such as fuel price hikes, the recently introduced high Goods and Services Tax rates and growing unemployment. This was after the provincial government reeled under the massive agitations by Other Backward Classes (OBCs), Patidar youths and followed by similar Dalit protests.

Far from being “the end of history,” the post-Cold War era has seen dramatic new developments in East Asia. China rose with astonishing speed to superpower status, and reasserted Communist Party control after a period when it seemed in danger of becoming irrelevant to China’s new consumer society. China is now openly challenging the United States and western Europe for global leadership. China has also, surprisingly, witnessed some revival of old traditions such as Confucianism. South Korea has captivated the world with its attractive modern pop culture, as well as with the products of its industry such as smartphones and automobiles. South Korea has also ended authoritarian rule and become a democracy (while North Korea, on the other hand, still seems to be mired in the Cold War). Japan has remained economically stagnant after the bursting of its stock market and real estate bubbles in 1990, but Japan has also made itself a globalizing center of exciting new pop culture. Vietnam, meanwhile, consolidated its socialist reunification, and implemented some of the same kinds of market-based economic reforms that had been pioneered in China.

The Cold War divided East Asia. Beginning around 1978, the communist People’s Republic of China implemented market-based reforms that unleashed spectacular economic takeoff, but which were not accompanied by corresponding political reforms. After a bloody war, Korea has remained divided between an impoverished and isolationistic communist regime in the north and the non-communist south. Japan’s postwar “developmental state” economy boomed, and by 1981 Japan had become the world’s largest automaker. Trade wars with the U.S. led to a sharp increase in the exchange value of the yen, however, and the bursting of the Japanese bubble economy in 1990. In Vietnam, after the defeat and withdrawal of French colonial forces, massive American military intervention in support of the non-communist south became deeply controversial. Eventually the U.S. disengaged, and Vietnam was reunified by communist northern forces in 1975. The Cold War therefore ended, somewhat surprisingly, with communist regimes still entrenched in East Asia in mainland China, Vietnam, and North Korea.