Author: Steven I Wilkinson
Translator(s)/ Edito: Steven I Wilkinson
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2007
Language: English
Pages: 446
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195690516
Description
The salience of religion in Indian politics has risen sharply in the past twenty-five years leading to major outbreaks of violence, most recently in Gujarat in 2002. The selections brought together in this volume describe some of the main events during this period and also introduce readers to different explanation scholars have put forward to answer key questions in the study of religious politics and communal violence.
The readings in this collection offer explanation as to why religious issues become prominent in politics at some times but not at others, and why religious mobilization seems to lead to communal riots and pogroms in some cases but not in many others.
Offering primarily political and institutional explanations for communal conflicts in India, the reader includes influential and lesser-known, yet significant interventions to present the most comprehensive social scientific analysis of communal violence.
Individual essays in the volume discuss religion, power, and elections, as also ethnically motivated and violent political behavior. Is communal conflict a construction deliberately fomented by the erstwhile colonial state or modern day politicians, or is it a reflection of intense and 'primordial' communal differences?
The essays in this volume provide leading sociological, psychological, economic and political explanations for the incidents of communal violence in Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Bengal, Delhi, and elsewhere.
Contents
List of Tables and Figures
Introduction
Rape at Daphnala
Partition and Violence in Mewat:
Rites of Territorial and Political Passage
Privileging the Local:
The 1984 Riots
Godhra: Crime against Humanity
Hindus and Muslims:
Communal Relations and Cultural Integration
Communal Violence in India
Ethnic Conflict and Civil Society:
India and Beyond
The Warriors
Hindu-Muslim Inter-group Relations in India:
Applying Socio-Psychological Perspectives
Communal Riots in Mau Nath Bhanjan
The 1992 Calcutta Rio in Historical Continuum:
A Relapse into 'Communal Fury'
The Politics of Processions and
Hindu-Muslim Riots
The Saffron Wave
When Local Riots are not Merely Local:
Bringing the State Back in, Bijnor 1988-92
Contestation and Negotiations:
Hindutva Sentiments and Temporal
Interests in Gujarat Elections
Commentary: Putting Gujarat in Perspective
Appendix
Notes on Contributors