The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India

Notes

NOTES 1 I EXPLAINING COMMUNAl, VrOI,ENCE 1. Onthe distinction between riots and pogroms in relation to Hindu-Muslimviolence in India, and on the more accurate description of many incidents of HinduMuslim violence since Independenceasanti-Muslim pogroms, seePaul R. Brass, Theft ofan Idol: Text andContextin the Representation ofCollective Violence. (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1997), pp. Iff. and passim; cf. also, among others, Amrita Basu, "WhyLocal Riots are NotSimplyLocal:CollectiveViolence and the State in Bijnor, India 1988-1993," TheoryandSociety 24 (1995): 35, and Gyanendra Pandey, "In Defense of the Fragment: Writing about Hindu-Muslim Riots in India Today," in Economic andPolitical Weekly [hereafter referred to asEPWj36, nos. 11 &12 (March1991): 559-72. 2. A point emphasized at several places in the recent, extraordinarily fine study by Thomas Blom Hansen, The Saffron Wave: Democracy and Hindu Nationalism in Modem India (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999). 3. The term Center is generally used in India to refer to the central (Union) Government of India, just as, in the United States, one refers to the government in Washington, D.C., as the federal government. 4. On these two movements and their relationship to the political calculations of and consequences for the parties and groups associated with militant Hindu nationalism , see Christophe Jaffrelot, The Hindu Nationalist Movement and Indian Politics: 1925 to the 19905 (London: Hurst, 1996), especially chapters sand 12. S. The most notorious and vicious of these killings occurred in the town of Bhagalpur in Bihar, where not just a riot occurred but massacres of many hundreds of Muslims; see especially Indu Bharti, "Bhagalpur Riots and Bihar Government," EPW34, no. 48 (December 2,1989): 2643-44. 6. Paul R. Brass, "General Elections, 1996 in Uttar Pradesh: Divisive Struggles Influence Outcome," .EPW32, no. 38 (September 20, 1997): 2403-23. 413 414 / Notes to Pages 9-,16 7. Ashutosh Varshney and StevenI. Wilkinson, Hindu-Muslim RiotSl96o-93:New Findings, Possible Remedies (New Delhi: Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, 1996), pp. 26-27. Their definition of riot-proneness is a town that has "had at least three communal riots, spread over at least two five-year periods in which a minimum of 15 deaths occurred." 8. Paul R. Brass, "Introduction: Discourses of Ethnicity, Communalism, and Violence," in Paul R. Brass (ed.), Riots and Pogroms (New York: NYU Press, 1996). 9. On the uses of the master narrative ofHindu-Muslim communalism and violence as an all-purpose explanation for disturbances ofthe public order in India during British rule, see Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction ofCommunalism in Colonial North India (Dellii: Oxford University Press, 1990). 10. See especially Doug McAdam, Political Process and the Development ofBlack Insurgency, 1930-1970 (Chicago; University of Chicago Press, 1982); Charles Tilly, "Contentious Repertoires in Great Britain, 1758-1834," Social Science History 17, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 253-79; and SidneyTarrow, Power in Movement: SocialMovements, Collective Action and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). n. Brass, Theft ofan Idol, pp. 9-20. 12. Journey by chariot, in this case placed on top of a Toyota. 13. Jayati Chaturvedi and Gyaneshwar Chaturvedi, "Dharma Yudh: Communal Violence, Riots and Public Space in Ayodhya and Agra City: 1990 and 1992," in Brass, Riots and Pogroms, p. 182. 14. Tilly and Tarrow have noted that, in every historical period of widespread protest activity, newforms ofcollective action appear that are considered illegitimate, but later become accepted and integrated into a new repertoire ofaccepted and legitimate forms. Their leading example is the industrial strike; see, for example, Sidney Tarrow, "CyclesofCollectiveAction: BetweenMomentsofMadness and the Repertoire of Contention," Social Science History 17, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 289. As far as I know, however, no society, even Nazi Germany or fascist Italy, however much it has practiced violence-including in the form of pogroms-has integrated violent riots into a repertoire of accepted and legitimate forms ofcollective action. 15. Bill Buford, Among the Thugs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992). 16. See Asghar Ali Engineer, "The Causes of Communal Riots in the PostPartition Period in India," in Asghar Ali Engineer (ed.), Communal Riots in PostIndependence India (Hyderabad: Sangam Books, 1984), pp. 33-41; Hussain Shaheen, "Communal Riots in the Post-PartitionPeriod in India: AStudy ofSome Causes and Remedial Measures," in Engineer, Communal Riots, pp. 165-74; Seymour Spilerman. "The Causes of Racial Disturbances: A Comparison of Alternative Explanations," American Sociological Review 35, no. 4 (August 1970): 627-49. Notes to Pages 17-20 /415 17. Raymond J...