Insurgencies, counter-insurgencies and terrorism have become the most common type of warfare in South Asia since 1947, and more people have died in the region due to this type of warfare rather than conventional warfare. The essays in this volume address all aspects of unconventional warfare as well as the religious aspects of the various intra-state conflicts which mar the multi-ethnic societies of South Asia.

Contents: Introduction; Part I Insurgencies, Counter-Insurgencies and Terrorism: Paramilitary forces in India, K.P. Misra; Innovations in counterinsurgency: the Indian Army's Rashtriya Rifles, Rajesh Rajagopalan; India's counter-insurgency experience: the 'trust and nurture' strategy, Namrata Goswami; Counterinsurgency in Pakistan: learning from India, Moeed Yusef and Anit Mukherjee; The fire within: Naxalite insurgency violence in India, Pratul Ahuja and Rajat Ganguly; Explaining the Kashmir insurgency: political mobilization and institutional decay, Sumit Ganguly; India, Pakistan and Kashmir: antinomies of nationalism, Ashutosh Varshney; The insurgency environment in Northeast India, Lawrence E. Cline; Confronting constructionism: ending India's Naga war, Sanjib Baruah; Bhutan's military action against Indian insurgents, Arijit Mazumdar; Spatial-horizontal inequality and the Maoist insurgency in Nepal, S. Mansoob Murshed and Scott Gates; Prabhakaran as leader of the LTTE, S.P. Sinha; Cogs in the wheel? Women in the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, Miranda Alison; Factors leading to insurgency in Balochistan, Alok Bansal. Part II Unconventional Warfare and Religion: The Indian armed forces' Sikh and non-Sikh officers' opinion of Operation Blue Star, Apurba Kundu; Gandhi and Bin Laden: religious conflict at the polar extremes, James L. Rowell; Just and unjust war in Hindu philosophy, Kaushik Roy; Tamil Tiger 'martyrs': regenerating divine potency?, Michael Roberts; Is the Sri Lankan War a Buddhist fundamentalism?, Richard Gombrich; Name index.

Scott Gates is Research Professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), and Professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU); Kaushik Roy is Reader in History at Jadavpur University, India and Senior Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Civil War, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Norway