ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that conventional approaches to understanding the Punjab crisis have proved inadequate. It describes a brief critical summary of the conventional approaches to the Punjab crisis and explains an alternative perspective centred around the idea of India as an 'ethnic democracy' where some ethnic groups are managed through democratic 'hegemonic control' and, increasingly, strategies of overt 'control'. The chapter presents a reassessment of the period since 1984 in context of the debate. Conventional approaches to the Punjab crisis fall broadly into three schools of thought: the centralisation thesis, economic, and Sikh ethno-nationalism. In India the recognition of the Hindu/non-Hindu distinction would suggest that a form of ethnic democracy co-exists alongside 'hegemonic control' and 'control' over non-Hindu minorities. A fully-developed perspective of India as an ethnic democracy in which hegemonic control and control is exercised over ethnic and religious minorities necessarily requires a reassessment of the post-1947 period.
