Paper short abstract:

The paper examines various forms of political violence in South Asia and develops a taxonomy of these violence.

Paper long abstract:

The definition of political violence has remained a contentious issue among the scholars, but a minimalist approach includes both violence against state and those perpetrated by the state. There have been various efforts to develop typologies of extant forms of political violence. This paper intends to contribute to the efforts through an examination of the extant forms of the political violence in South Asia and identifying common factors those would allow to categorize them together. Taking a broad range of collective actions, from insurgency to religion inspired militancy to state sponsored violence, this paper demonstrates that three categories of factors - institutional, ideational and individual - are helpful in understanding the nature of political violence in South Asia.