Telling the story of communal conflicts in South Asia: interim report on a personal search for defining myths

Abstract

A major discovery or innovation in the natural and social sciences often has a foundational myth associated with it. That myth usually captures the social relations of the discovery and its status in popular culture. A search for narratives on ethno-religious violence in South Asia, to identify stories that may become in future representative foundational myths, reveals that they all grapple with the open-ended nature of South Asian self, including its multicultural core; the implosion of proximity, rather than distance, that often powers major genocidal clashes; the uncertain status and limited range of play of nationalist ideologies, secular and nonsecular, in traditional selfdefinitions; and the psychological insecurities and desperate search for community that have been released by the processes associated with the urbanindustrial vision in the region. The rising tide of ethno-religious violence in South Asia, thus, faces deep resistance at ground level.