Journal articles on the topic 'Secession India'

Abstract This article proposes remedial secession as an international legal solution conducive to the protection of the rights of the Kashmiri people. The triggering event for such a proposal is the unilateral abrogation of Article 370 of the Indian Constitution (which guaranteed Kashmir its semi-autonomous status within India) by the Government of India together with the subsequent human rights abuses in the region. External self-determination and remedial secession are not clearly recognised in the existing corpus of international law. This article aims to demystify external self-determination in international law and presents a normative argument in favour of recognising remedial secession in international law, albeit as a remedy of last resort, using Kashmir as a case study for its application. It is proposed that international law borrow from conflict-oriented approaches in political philosophy to garner adequate criteria in order to foreground, legitimise and properly delineate the contours of the proposed right to remedial secession. This article thus also presents possible means of effecting the proposed right to remedial secession, analyses their theoretical justifications and, through application in the context of Kashmir, discusses their practical value.

By way of framing Manan Ahmed Asif's intriguing personal (and poetic) reflection entitled “Idol in the Archive” in this current issue of the Journal of Asian Studies, it must always be remembered that in August 1947, the old British Raj gave birth to not one but two independent nation-states, namely India and Pakistan. India became a “Sovereign Democratic Republic” when its Constitution came into effect on January 26, 1950, following adoption of its draft Constitution by its Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949. Pakistan took a bit longer, becoming the “Islamic Republic of Pakistan” when its first Constitution came into effect on March 23, 1956. Furthermore, of course, Pakistan underwent secession of its Eastern Province with the founding of the “People's Republic of Bangladesh” in 1971. It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that partition is the defining event of modern independent India and Pakistan, and, more than that, continues to be the defining event of India and Pakistan even after more than fifty years of independence.

Purpose: - The up-rise of social unrest in the state of Jammu & Kashmir (the federal constituent of the Union of India) towards the end of the 20th century with the demand to secede from the union of India has somewhere earned the Jammu & Kashmir as a conflict zone in the South Asia. The present study has been conceived to examine the public participation of the Jammu & Kashmir state in the democratic process of the country, by participating in the general elections of India (A referendum or plebiscite of its own kind, whereby people of the state, time and again have reaffirmed their faith in the democratic process of the country) since its accession with the union of India. Some of the aspects evaluated in the present study include, electoral participation, participation of national and local level political parties, participation and performance of national level political parties, representation given to women candidates, etc.Scope: - The study is confined to the state of Jammu & Kashmir, India and the findings have direct bearing with the state, which has altogether a different geopolitical setup, where public interests stand safeguarded by the constitution of India under article 370. There is every need to observe caution, while generalizing the findings of the study.Methodology/Approach: - The study is empirical in nature, undertaken on the secondary data, retrieved from the official website of the Election Commission of India on August 02, 2014.Findings: - The state of Jammu and Kashmir has so far undergone through 12 general elections in the country. The average voter turnout during these elections from the state remained about 46.76%. At gender level the average voter turnout percentage among males remained 60% & for females 39.90%, which compared to voter turnout at national level during the same period at gender level remained 62.39% and 55.45% respectively. The voter turnout percentage from the state remained far better than various other states of the country for the same period. The threat perception to not to participate in the electoral process of the country that prevailed over state populace post 1989 got reflected in the subsequent 7 general elections held in the state, especially among female folk, resulting decline in their turnout percentage, when compared to their male counterparts.Social Implications: - The study is an eye opener to the public at large and to those, who are abetting the Jammu & Kashmir’s secession movement by crying that the state is devoid of democracy. The secession movement which is being backed by the money & the munitions questions its own credibility & justification.

AbstractGreat historical crises oblige us to choose not between violence and nonviolence, but between two different forms of violence. Nonviolent movements are no exception to this rule. In the US, with the outbreak of the War of Secession, the Christian-nonviolent movement was obliged to choose between the violence of the Union-army (which ultimately imposed on the South an abolitionist revolution from above) and the violence of slavery. With the outbreak of World-War One, Lenin chose revolution, while, in India, Gandhi became the ‘recruiting agent-in-chief’ for the British army. At that moment, he struggled not for the general emancipation of colonial peoples, but only for the co-optation of the Indian people under the ruling races, and this co-optation was to be gained on the battlefield. While in the past, in spite of their mistakes and oscillations, the protagonists of nonviolence (Gandhi, Tolstoy, Martin Luther King, etc.) were an integral part of the anticolonialist movement, today nonviolence is the watchword of imperialism, which tries to discredit as violent its enemies and challengers.

After thirteen long years of military dictatorship, national elections on the basis of adult franchise were held in Pakistan in December 1970. The Awami League, led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, and the Pakistan Peoples Party, under Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, emerged as the two majority political parties in East Pakistan and West Pakistan respectively. The political party commanding a majority in one wing of the country had almost no following in the other. This ended in a political and constitutional deadlock, since this split mandate and political exclusiveness gradually led to the parting of ways and political polarization. Power was not transferred to the majority party (that is, the Awami League) within the legally prescribed time; instead, in the wake of the political/ constitutional crisis, a civil war broke out in East Pakistan which soon led to an open war between India and Pakistan in December 1971. This ultimately resulted in the dismemberment of Pakistan, and in the creation of Bangladesh as a sovereign country. The book under review is a political study of the causes and consequences of this crisis and the war, based on a reconstruction of the real facts, historical events, political processes and developments. It candidly recapitulates the respective roles of the political elites (both of India and Pakistan), their leaders and governments, and assesses their perceptions of the real situation. It is an absorbing narrative of almost thirteen months, from 7 December, 1970, when elections were held in Pakistan, to 17 December, 1971 when the war ended after the Pakistani army's surrender to the Indian army in Dhaka (on December 16, 1971). The authors, who are trained political scientists, give fresh interpretations of these historical events and processes and relate them to the broader regional and global issues, thus assessing the crisis in a broader perspective. This change of perspective enhances our understanding of the problems the authors discuss. Their focus on the problems under discussion is sharp, cogent, enlightening, and circumspect, whether or not the reader agrees with their conclusions. The grasp of the source material is masterly; their narration of fast-moving political events is superbly anchored in their scientific methodology and political philosophy.

In 1971, by a devastating war, Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) achieved independence from (West) Pakistan. Since then, both parties have documented and presented their research findings on the war. However, many of these findings have lacked credibility. Perhaps the only objective account on the 1971 war has been Richard Sisson and Leo Rose’s War and Secession: Pakistan, India and the Creation of Bangladesh (1991). Sarmila Bose’s recent work, Dead Reckoning, today constitutes a significant contribution to the research on Bangladesh’s war of independence, all the more so for its unique methodology in using multiple sources of original information and cross-checked eyewitness testimonies from all parties involved. Pakistani army personnel as well as Bangladeshi muktijoddhas (freedom fighters) and victims of the war were interviewed to authenticate currently available materials, many of which appear to have been exaggerated with the force of emotion. This distinguishes the work from many other books authored by proponents of either party to the conflict. This book is certainly an eye-opener for researchers on the 1971 war.

Why would elites or masses in an ethnically distinct region ever opt for “alien rule” over national independence? While separatist movements tend to create the most drama and make the most headlines, mass media and most scholarly accounts pay far less attention to ethnic groups opting to stay in a union state dominated by other groups. Yet such unionist groups are surely more numerous than the separatist ones. Indeed, in the neighborhood of almost every separatist region in a given multi-ethnic state, one can find one or more unionist groups, such as the Yoruba during Nigeria's Biafran Civil War, the Ingush as Chechnya battled the Russian Federation, and the Kannadigas at the peak of Kashmir's struggle for independence from India. Sometimes, unionist groups advocate political integration despite seeming to have every reason to seek secession. Such groups are neglected by analysts only at great cost, because it is precisely these groups that are likely to hold the key to understanding how distinct groups can come to live together in peace.

In the context of public international law and relations between principles of territorial integrity and right to self-determination, independence of Kosovo will never be legal if it is not recognized by Serbia. This can be concluded from the examples of violent secession of Bangladesh and Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. That is why Serbia still has a right to decide about the independence of Kosovo and Metohija despite signing Brussels Agreement and the fact that 100 UN member states recognized Kosovo as an independent state. Forty years after the secession of northern part of the island, Nicosia has not recognized Turkish republic of Northern Cyprus, which caused that this secessionist creation does not become a member of the UN. Its independence is not full from the perspective of international law, and this fact that cannot be disputed in spite of the factual occupation of the northern part of island by Turkey. On the other side, Pakistan recognized the independence of Bangladesh and forever lost half of its population and state territory. In return, half of its foreign debt was written off, 90,000 prisoners were released and 13,000 square kilometers of territory in western part of Pakistan, controlled by India, were returned. However, no one is offering anything similar to Serbia to recognize the independence of Kosovo. Debts of Kosovo towards IMF and World Bank are paid by Serbia. In addition, if Serbia recognized the independence of Kosovo, Serbia would lose about 100,000 Serbs living on that territory and about 1,200 square kilometers of territory in the northern part of Kosovo which is not controlled by Pristina. In that context, it is clear that principles of territorial integrity are still stronger in international law then right to self-determination. Postmodernist theories have a goal to hide that fact. Key of the independence of so-called ?Kosovo? is still in hands of Belgrade. That is why there are so many persistent attempts and strong pressures from the West to recognize the independence of ?Kosovo?. Example of Cyprus shows how to resist those attempts within the framework of public international law (by applying the principles of territorial integrity). However, if in the future Serbia chooses the same approach as Pakistan in the case of Bangladesh, Kosovo will be lost forever. At that moment, it would be clear that the relations of great powers in the world have changed.

Abstract We look at the formation of new Indian states in 2001 to uncover the effects of political secession on the comparative economic performance of natural resource rich and natural resource poor areas. Resource rich constituencies fared comparatively worse within new states that inherited a relatively larger proportion of natural resources. We argue that these patterns reflect how political reorganisation affected the quality of state governance of natural resources. We describe a model of collusion between state politicians and resource rent recipients that can account for the relationships we see in the data between natural resource abundance and post-break-up local outcomes.

Walter C. Clemens, Jr. Negotiating a New Life: Burdens of Empire and Independence—the Case of the BalticsThe Soviet Union disappeared in 1991 but, dying, gave birth to many new shoots of life, each struggling to survive and flourish despite great difficulties. Devolution of empire rarely proceeds without pain; it often causes, or results from, great violence. The first year of independent life for the successor states of the USSR witnessed much less violence than attended the demise of other great empires in this century. None had to fight for liberation as did Algeria and Angola. The fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia does not approach the violence seen in the breakup of India, the attempted secessions of Katanga and Biafra, or the Croatian-Serbian war.

In this paper, Intizar Husain’s novel on Partition, Basti is examined which depicts the human denouement that followed Partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. The novel looks back at the aftermath of Partition after more than two decades, talks about the turmoil caused by the socio-political situation in Pakistan and the realization that the Partition was an ever going on event. The process of separate homeland for Muslims, the chief motive that resulted in Partition, was reversed with the secession of Bangladesh. Partition and migration have failed to provide stability to the migrants. Intizar Husain has recaptured the agony of Partition after a lapse of two decades. The novel, dealing with the Muslim perspective of Partition, depicts the plight of the members of the community who crossed over to Pakistan with the euphoria of the creation of a separate homeland, fail to realise their hopes. Feeling of alienation has been delineated in a highly subtle manner.

Islam has been wrongly interpreted by representing it synonymous with terrorand “the Muslim,” as Hamid Dabashi maintains in Norway: Muslims andMetaphors (2011), “is a metaphor of menace, banality and terror everywhere”(p. 2). Consequently, Muslims in and beyond South Asia are being stigmatizedby the newly constituted environment known in the western scheme of thingsas “Islamophobia.” The state of disgrace and misery of Muslims continues toincrease and is being facilitated by the biased ideas and thoughts propoundedby some journalists and writers to construct often misleading and one-dimensional images. This had led to Muslims being harassed, dishonored,and rebuked. The present book evinces their increasingly stereotyped and demonizedportrayal.Imagining Muslims in South Asia and the Diaspora is a critical evaluationand analysis of representations of these Muslims in literature, the media, culture,and cinema. The essays highlight their diverse representations and therange of approaches to questions concerning their religious and cultural identityas well as secular discourse. In addition they contextualize the depictionsagainst the burgeoning post-9/11 artistic interest in Islam and against culturalresponses to earlier crises in the Subcontinent, including the 1947 partition,the 1971 war and subsequent secession of Bangladesh, the 1992 Ayodhyariots, the 2002 Gujarat genocide, and the ongoing tension in Indian-occupiedKashmir ...

That was the year that was! 2021 seemingly arrived just yesterday and now we are shortly to bid it farewell. I hailed its predecessor as heralding the hope for a new clarity of vision – the start of a new decade which promised much. However, I have become reminded that perfect 20/20 vision in the present may not necessarily lead to reliable predictions for the future. Further I have immediately been taken back to my undergraduate days and the unforgettable words of the great poet T. S Eliot in his poem Burnt Norton – the first of the four Quartets Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future, And time future contained in time past. If all time is eternally present All time is unredeemable. What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation. What might have been and what has been Point to one end, which is always present They are words that seem to ring particularly true not only to anyone contemplating their remorselessly advancing years and reflecting on a career nearing completion, but they also seem particularly apposite for the experiences of the last two years. The pandemic started by destroying our expectations and predictions for what lay ahead. It ensured that our best laid plans for our immediate futures would remain unfulfilled and thus unredeemable. Subsequently during the year, we were left to speculate as to our future pathways - not only with regard to our professional activities, but also concerning our personal and family relationships – with a whole world of separation between ourselves and those of our kith and kin domiciled in distant lands. Though for some it may have been no more than a regional border! Such forced isolation caused many of us to think backwards as well, reflecting on our past trajectories and recalling both mistakes and successes alike. Yet for many it became a time to substitute the incessant demands of work and its associated travel and busy-ness with former and forgotten pleasures. Leisurely walks with friends and family, the rediscovering of rhythms and tempos unimpeded by the daily demands of our diaries and other extraneous demands on our time that had required us to respond immediately and forgo the immediate needs of the surroundings and people closest to us. Above all, with the future in limbo and the past re-emerging in our minds, it reinforced the realisation that the present is what we really have, and it contains what is most important. For a time, the incessant chatter and noise of the media retained our attention, just as it had dominated our attention at the end of 2019. Yet, somehow during the year, the hype and frenzied reporting seems to have diminished in impact. This was nowhere more evident than in the responses to COP26 – the 26th United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, UK. Items in the press came thick and fast leading up to the event: predictions of planetary doom; political conflicts were highlighted as world leaders met or didn’t meet on the conference stage; appearances by the celebrities of the world; demonstrations aplenty. All of this breathless activity faded imperceptibly out of our consciousness as the serious (but more boring?) negotiations between nations started to take place, with much of the brilliance of the limelight now exhausted. The anticlimactic conclusion was judged by Boris Johnson, the chair and among the most optimistic of politicians, as achieving a 6 out of 10. Several positive outcomes were identified such as: commitments to end deforestation; a global methane pledge; a socalled ‘Breakthrough Agenda’, which committed countries to work together to accelerate the clean energy transition. Yet predictably, this was labelled by the critics and activists as too little too late. Although there are many who would see climate crisis as the major crisis that faces us – there are many other current crises of even more pressing and immediate concern to very many of us. The most urgent of which, would depend upon your own circumstances and where you might find yourself in the world. Examples from recent media would include: the loss of previously taken for granted freedoms in Hong Kong; increased fears for personal safety and the prospect of hunger and poverty in Afghanistan; the loss of political freedoms and the prospects of war in Belarus and the Ukraine; the prospect of secession leading to renewed civil war in Serbia; another military coup in Sudan; civil unrest in Cuba, etc etc.. On a global scale the movement of people leaving failed states and war-torn areas looking for the chance to make a better future, has continued to increase on a scale that the world is quite unable to manage. Sadly, even in the countries that are eagerly sought as destinies, there seem to be endless stories of strife, anxiety and anger to be told. The Economist provides the example of France, the ninth largest economy in the world with the 20th largest population of 67+ million. This pillar of Europe is facing a presidential election. Far from rejoicing in its prosperity, stability and proud history – the mood is sombre. Tune in to any French prime time talk show this autumn, and discussion rages over the country’s wretched decline. France is losing its factories and jobs, squeezing incomes and small businesses, destroying its landscapes and language, neglecting its borders and squandering its global stature. Its people are fractious and divided, if not on the verge of a civil war, as a public letter from retired army officers suggested earlier this year. At the second presidential primary debate for the centre-right Republicans party, on November 14th, the five candidates competed with each other to chronicle French disaster. Listen to the hard right, and it is “the death of France as we know it”. The anxiety is widespread. In a recent poll 75% agreed that France is “in decline”. When asked to sum up their mood in another survey, the French favoured three words: uncertainty, worry and fatigue. So, we are entitled to ask, what is happening in the world as we contemplate the path out of Covid? Should we not be expecting some feeling of optimism and gratitude that modern medicine has provided a way forward out of the pandemic through vaccination and new medical treatments? We should be putting the trials and tribulations of the pandemic behind us, embracing the lessons we have learnt and anticipating the benefits of the reassessments and recalibrations we have undergone over the last two years. Yet instead, we seem to be facing re-entry into a world of strife and dissension. It is a view that that would seem to encourage retreat into the comfort of a limited and familiar space, rather than striking out confidently and optimistically. So, to return to Eliot – perhaps we need to be reminded that the present is all we have. We will only be able to experience our future when we arrive there. Therefore, the pathway we choose to it, should be as smooth, rich and rewarding as possible. It should not be characterised by hedonism but rather by enhancing rather than diminishing the future. Every moment spent devaluing either our future or our past, is a moment that further undermines our present. This last point is particularly true when we fail to see our present in the context of both our past and future. One of the major contributions to this current angst within our societies, appears to be the cultural wars being waged by the warriors of WOKE. Passing judgements on figures from a previous time, without a clear understanding of the context in which they operated makes absolutely no sense. It is akin to a capital punishment abolitionist vilifying the heroes of the French Revolution for allowing Madame Guillotine to be the agent of their retribution against the aristocracy. So, it is with defacing statues of those who lived and acted in far different times and were the product of the dominant values and beliefs of that time. It is indeed an act of vandalism. If we remove all evidence of the history to which such people belonged, how can we expect to learn from that time and ensure that the world does indeed move forward? Although we are talking about the context provided by time – this is equally true of all the contexts in which we currently find ourselves. It is impossible to understand human behaviour without knowing and understanding the context in which it occurs. This is a key principle of the science of human behaviour. Alas it is a principle that has been neglected in the sport sciences in recent years. Whereas research into the physiology, psychology and biomechanics of sport has flourished, too often it is reported in a way that fails to adequately take account of the context in which it occurs. It is why so many findings are ungeneralisable and remain in the laboratory rather than making the journey out onto the playing field of life. Understanding the history and the social context within which sport is practised is essential if scientists and professionals are going to be able to make comparisons between findings gained in different settings. Comparative studies in sport and physical education play an important role in enabling knowledge and understanding about these institutions to be widely shared. Our journal therefore has an important role to play in the development and sharing of knowledge and understanding between scientists and professionals in different settings. This is a role that has been filled by our journal over the last forty-three years. I am pleased to be able to report that the society (ISCPES), following a break of four years in activity, will be meeting again at the end of this year. The meeting which can be attended online will be hosted by Lakshmibai National College of Physical Education in India. Details are provided in this edition, and I commend this important meeting to you. That there is an interest and demand in comparative and international studies is clear from the number of submissions we have been receiving for our journal. The chance to meet with fellow researchers and colleagues in real time, if not actually face to face, is to be welcomed. It is my fervent hope that this will lead to continuing growth in interest in our multidiscipline and internationally focused field. I congratulate the organisers for their initiative. I would also like to pay tribute to former president Dr Walter Ho of the University of Macau, for his role in this as well as for his continuing support of our journal. So, I come to commend to you the contributions of this latest volume. They come from four different continents and as such provide a representative cross section of our readership. The topics about which they write give an example of the range of understanding and practices that can usefully be shared amongst us. In our first paper Croteau, Eduljee and Murphy report on the health, lifestyle behaviours and well-being of international Masters field hockey athletes. The Masters sport movement provides an important example of why sport represents a solid investment in assisting individuals to commit to health supporting physical activity across the lifespan. The study is particularly interesting, as it provides evidence of the broader sense of wellbeing to be gained by ongoing participation and also the fact that this benefit seems to apply even in the geographic and culturally different environments provided by life in Europe, North America and, Asia and the Pacific. Our second paper by Kubayi, Coopoo and Toriola addresses a familiar problem – the breakdown in communication between researchers and scientists in sport and the coaches who work with the athletes. The context for this study is provided by elite performance level sport in South Africa and the sports of soccer, athletics, hockey and netball. It is concluded that the sports scientists and academics need to be encouraged to make their work more available by presenting it more frequently face to face during coaching workshops, seminars, clinics and conferences. However, the caveat is that this needs to be done in a way that is understandable, applicable and relevant to helping the coach make effective decisions and solve problems in a way that benefits the athletes as the end product. A team of medical and pedagogical scientists from Gadjah Mada University in Indonesia provide the Asian input to this volume. They raise a concern over the issue of safety and risk in physical education and how well specialists in the subject are prepared in the area of sport injury management. Hidayat, Sakti, Putro, Triannga, Farkhan, Rahayu and Magetsari collaborated in a survey of 191 physical education teachers. They concluded that there was a need for better and more sustained teacher education on this important topic. PE teacher training should not only upgrade teachers’ knowledge but also increase their self-perceptions of competence. PE teachers should be provided with enhanced training on sports injuries and Basic Life Support (BLS) skills, in order to improve the safety and maximize the benefits of PE classes. It is a finding that could usefully be compared with current practices in other countries and settings, given the common focus in the PE lesson on children performing challenging tasks in widely varying contexts. Our final paper by Rojo, Ribeiro and Starepravo takes a very much broader perspective. Sport migration is a relatively new, specialised but expanding field in sports studies. This paper is however significant not for what it can tell us about current knowledge in sport migration, but rather in what it tells us about the way knowledge is gathered and disseminated in a specialist area such as this. Building on the ideas of Bourdieu, they demonstrate how the field of knowledge is shaped by the key actors in the process and how these key actors serve to gather and use their academic capital in that process. As such fields of knowledge can become artificially constricted in both the spaces and cultures in which they develop. The authors highlight a very real problem in the generation and transmission of academic knowledge, and it is one that International Sports Studies is well positioned to address. In conclusion, may I encourage you in sharing with these papers to actively engage in reflecting on the importance of the varying contexts these authors bring and how sensitivity to this can enlarge and deepen our own practices and understanding. John Saunders Brisbane, November 2021

India’s Northeast has long been risen by protracted armed conflicts for secession and movements for other forms of autonomy. India’s Northeast, the confederation of eight states (i.e, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim and Tripura) is home to around 200 indigenous communities. All these communities struggle for recognition by the Indian government and have their own respective struggle for identity. This paper examines how various brands of identity politics since the colonial days have served to create the basis of exclusion of groups, resulting in various forms of rifts, often envisaged in binary terms, majority-minority, sons of the soil-immigrant, local outsiders, tribal-non-tribal, hills, plains, inter tribal and intra-tribal.

Abstract India’s post-colonial constitution introduced a new approach to federalism based on a substantial sphere of shared responsibility between Central and State governments, especially in the fields of social and economic policy, and a Central government with strong prerogatives to intervene in provincial affairs. This was qualified at the time as a diminished or “quasi” form of federalism. Existing explanations of the origins of India’s centralized federalism focus on efforts to curb further secession attempts in the aftermath of Partition or the need for a strong Center to consolidate democracy in a highly unequal society. This article draws on archival materials to demonstrate that distinctive elements of Indian federalism were shaped at their foundations by the desire to boost industrial development and lay the foundation for a national welfare state in a post-colonial future by preventing the consolidation of “race to the bottom” dynamics arising from unregulated inter-provincial economic competition.

AbstractAt world level, the current official number of large camelids cannot be determined exactly (it is estimated to be more than 35 million heads), and the role of camels in the livestock economy is highly variable. The only reliable statistics are provided by FAO since 1961. According to these data, five different patterns of demographic changes have been observed. In countries marked by a regular or drastic decline of their camelid population, a tendency to re-increase has been in force since the beginning of the century, except in India. Generally, countries marked by a sharp recent increase in their large camelid population have implemented a census and readjusted their data. Many inconsistencies occur in available data, most notably cases arising from changes occurring in state status (for example secession of Eritrea, Soviet Union collapse). Moreover, large camelid stocks in Australia, in countries of new camel establishment (Western countries) and those related to the expansion of camel farming, notably in Africa, are not recorded in the international database. In addition, there is no distinction between dromedary and Bactrian data. The present large camelid population in the world is probably more than 40 million and could reach 60 million after 25 years from now if the current demographic trend is maintained.

The aim of this paper is to explore the changing aesthetic and ideological connotations of the representation of America as an Indian woman in the sixteenth-century engravings of the discovery and conquest of the New World and the late-eighteenth-century political cartoons of America's national conflict and eventual secession from mother England. In both cases, the male enterprise of colonization and nation-making is aesthetically expressed in the fetishistic and symbolic representation of the female body as the simultaneously alluring and devouring female, seductively naked before the white male European, and as the victim of political violence and the national struggle for independence.