Introduction to special issue on Civil Society in South Asia

The articles included in this special issue were, with one exception (from an author who was unable to obtain a visa to travel to India), presented at a workshop on civil society in South Asia, held in Hyderabad in South India in March 2018. The workshop was organized jointly by the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, based in London, and the Aga Khan Academy in Hyderabad. Both organizing institutions belong to the Aga Khan Development Network, which has for many years seen the strengthening of civil society through the promotion of community-based organization and initiative as a core part of its work. The purpose of the Hyderabad workshop was not, however, to focus only or even primarily on the way that contemporary development discourse has incorporated ideas of voluntarism and local initiative into its work but to consider how a concept that emerged from seventeenth and eighteenth century European reflections on social and political life in the age of absolutism has been received by scholars and intellectuals in different times and places, and the extent to which it can illuminate contemporary political movements as well as offering ways to address and engage with the full range of issues that concern the contemporary world. Gurpreet Mahajan sets out one of the key issues by contrasting the abstract universality of certain conceptions of civil society with the lived reality of noisy quotidian politics. This tension can be observed in all states but is particularly striking in South Asia, where the legitimacy of post-colonial institutions is constantly challenged, and where, spurred on by international agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have become major service providers. Mahajan’s article includes a section that deals specifically with organizations that have an explicit focus on the needs of particular religious populations, a theme that is also the focus of the contributions by Rowena Robinson and Sanjeer Alam. She argues that the work of such organizations can benefit the wider society both directly and indirectly, even while carrying an element of risk to social integration and democratic values. More generally, it is precisely these divergent interests and value-orientations that make up the democratic imaginary. Two of the contributors to this special issue, Harihar Bhattacharyya and Sanjeeb Mukherjee, continue the themes raised by Mahajan by engaging with the work of Partha Chatterjee. Chatterjee has made one of the most influential interventions in the debate over civil society in regions such as South Asia and his work over many years has advanced the idea that civil society is indeed a Western concept that transplants poorly to a South Asian postcolonial context. Those who wish to accompany him on