This book highlights the role of emotions in the contentious politics of modern South Asia. It brings new methodological, theoretical and empirical insights to exaamine the integral relationship between emotions and mobilisations to contribute to the understanding of South Asian politics.

1. Contentious Emotions: An Introduction PART I: Bringing Emotions Back into South Asian Political Mobilisations: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives 2. The Processes and Contexts of Emotional Involvement 3. Participatory and Adversarial Politics: Representing Speech Action, Collective Action and Emotion 4. Remembering and Accessing the 'Emotion of Things': A Methodological Journey with a Jihadist Militant in Pakistan PART II: Major Historical Shifts in the Public Expression of Emotions 5. Anger, Hurt and Enthusiasm: Mobilising for Violence, 1870-1920 6. From Court to Public Sphere: How Urdu Poetry's Language of Romance Shaped the Language of Protest PART III: Subverting and Cementing Power Relations with Emotions 7. Emotions as Fuel: The Passage of Anti-Sexual Harassment Legislation in Pakistan 8. It's Effective Because It's Affective: The Dynamics and Significance of Emotions in a Delhi Jan Sunwai 9. The Deployment of Resentment in Counterinsurgency: The Case of Chhattisgarh PART IV: Directing Affects Across the Elusive Boundaries of the Political 10. Mobilising Anger in Andhra Pradesh: The Emotional Politics of the Angry Young Man and Popular Telugu Cinema 11. Hope and Nostalgia in Bengal: The Longing for Netaji in a Contemporary Millennial Movement 12. Dialectics of (De)Mobilisation: Humour in Islamic Sermons of Contemporary Bangladesh PART V: The Emotional Dynamics of Public Controversies 13. Hurt and Censorship in India Today: On Communities of Sentiments, Competing Vulnerabilities and Cultural Wars 14. Death, Despair, and Democracy in Bangladesh. Glossary. Index