Communal riots in India as a transitory form of political violence: three approaches

Abstract

Despite their brutality, communal riots in India constitute a far more short-lived form of political violence than civil war and state terror. To make this point is not so commonsensical as it may seem, given the scarcity of reflections regarding this fact in the scholarship on riots in India. Therefore, in thematizing temporality, transience and recurrence, this article aims to broaden the study of communal riots and relate it more closely to general discussions of political violence. Beginning with the three most common approaches to communal riots in India within social anthropology and its neighbouring disciplines – namely the bird's-eye view, agency and everyday life approaches – I suggest how each can be extended or employed to make riot temporality clearer. This focus may also nuance the way we conceptualize the role of the state and encourage reflection on how we classify instances of political violence.