Since the 1990s, secularism has been at bay, particularly in Eurasia. It is threatened by neo-conservative imperialism and its regulation of market economy, and by religio-political fanaticism, not only of Islamic purists, but also of born-again Christians and Hindu or Buddhist fundamentalists. This book describes years from 1998 to 2001 in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, spent lecturing on modern and contemporary Asian International Relations at its University of Wwrold Economy and Diplomacy. A memoir of daily life, public affairs, academic views, socio-economic trends and political culture in Tashkent, Samarkand and Bukhara, as well as of a week in almaty, Kazakhstan spotilights the crisis in civil society. It probes a ‘view from the South’ of Uzbek social motivation in painful transition from protection of labour interests towards bourgeois market economy. Alternative interpretations are presented of the evolution of President Karimov’s rise from nomenklatura socialist vested interests. Religious fundamentalism as a source of discontent and protest has been less significant compared to secular crises in old habits of fear regulated by the state, historical tradition is invented to weld a semi-mythical new Uzbek identity, complete with legendary conquerors, warriors, and innovative Islamic scholars of folklore. Trends in south Asia have been focused where relevant, including desiderata in India’s foreign policy about Central Asia. The threads are then knitted together of this field survey of political economy, sociology, Eurasian geopolitics as a critique of social trends, public affairs, and historiography in modern India, the contemporary Caucasus and the lands of Turco-Iranian civilization. This book is an Indian perspective on world history, Asian sociology and specifically the political economy of modern transition regimes.
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