Author: Ashutosh Varshney
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2005
Language: English
Pages: 382
ISBN/UPC (if available): 0195672429
Description
This pioneering study examines the history of communal violence and peace across pairs of Indian cities to discern why violence between Hindus and Muslims occur in some situations but not in others. The paperback edition includes a new preface where the author responds to scholarly reactions to his work. This book will interest scholars across disciplines, activists, journalists, policymakers, and an informed general audience.
REVIEWS
South Asian scholars and social scientists will have to read Varshney, they will cite him, and they will learn from him.
-Susanne H Rudolph, University of Chicago
An extraordinary achievement.
-Pratap Bhanu Mehta, Outlook
It is a systematic attempt at examining and establishing the relationship between the structure of civic life and the presence of ethnic or communal violence in India.
-Haseeb A Drabu, Business Standard
Varshney's inspired and inspiring book offers a plausible theoretical framework to understand why the bigots fail or succeed as well as a practical strategy to ensure that they are kept on a tight leash.
-Dileep Padgaonkar, Times of India
Contents
PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK EDITION
PREFACE TO THE INDIAN EDITION
PREFACE
PART I: ARGUMENTS AND THEORIES
Introduction
Why Civil Society? Ethnic Conflict and the Existing Traditions of Inquiry
PART II: THE NATIONAL LEVEL
Competing National Imaginations
Hindu-Muslim Riots, 1950-1995: The National Picture
PART III: LOCAL VARIATIONS
Aligarh and Calicut: Civic Life and Its Political Foundations
Vicious and Virtuous Circles
Princely Resistance to Civil Society
Hindu Nationalists as Bridge Builders?
Gandhi and Civil Society
Decline of a Civic Order and Communal Violence
Endogeneity? Of Causes and Consequences
PART IV: CONCLUSIONS
Ethnic Conflict, the State, and Civil Society
Appendix A: Questionnaire for the Project on Hindi-Muslim Relations in India
Appendix B: Data Entry Protocol for the Riot Database
Appendix C: Regression Results: Hindu-Muslim Riots, 1950-1995
Notes
Index