Politics by other means

Abstract

Paul Brass’ latest book The Production of Hindu–Muslim Violence in Contemporary India (2003) is an extraordinary work that sums up almost 40 years of research on politics, religious identities and violence in northern India. Focusing on the politics of Hindu–Muslim relations in one city in Uttar Pradesh – Aligarh – over the entire post-Independence era, Brass argues that riots are permanent features of Indian politics, produced and staged by ‘institutionalized riot systems’. Condemning and bemoaning riots and casualties have become part of India’s modern political culture – as much as the riots themselves. Brass’s introductory chapter takes aim at what he sees as the unsatisfactory and, ultimately, mystifying explanations that have been advanced in explaining riots. ‘Naturalizing’ accounts portray riots as inevitable eruptions of anger between communities divided by deep and incommensurable differences. Others view riots as pathologies of Indian political life, resulting from the cynical manipulation of religious passions by criminal business people and ill-intentioned politicians focused on short-term electoral gains. These explanations, Brass argues, not only obscure the processes at work; they are complicit in the very regime of interpretation that perpetuates riots. Portraying them as either ‘justified’ or as short lived ‘aberrations’, these explanations fail to recognize the integral, normalized roles riots play in political competition and communal organization in large parts of India. R E V I E W S Y M P O S I U M