Hindu-Muslim Violence Research Articles

Collective Violence In India

Collective communal violence is one of the defining features of post-Independence Indian politics. Although Hindu-Muslim violence predominates, violence against Buddhists, Christians, Sikhs and Hindus (in states where they are a minority) is not unknown.

The 1984 anti-Sikh pogroms: Phenomenological experiences and perceptions of direct and indirect victims of violence

ABSTRACT Previous literature explores the socio-political contours of Hindu-Muslim violence, with limited attention given to the experiences of victims and the Hindu-Sikh inter-communal relationships. This study specifically examines the 1984 Anti-Sikh pogrom, employing a phenomenological approach to gather insights from Sikh participants who were direct or indirect victims of the violence and aged 20–40 at the time. The findings underscore significant experiences such as the fear of survival, betrayal, and reaction inhibition amidst hostility during the pogrom. Presently, the victims continue to grapple with a sense of loss, hopelessness concerning justice, and a lack of trust in the Hindu community.

Raheel Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace: Special Difference in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002

Raheel Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace: Special Difference in Hindu-Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002

Book review: Raheel Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu–Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002

Raheel Dhattiwala, Keeping the Peace: Spatial Differences in Hindu–Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002. Cambridge University Press. 2019. 193 pages. ₹695.

Patterned pogroms: Patronage networks as infrastructure for electoral violence in India and Indonesia

The regular occurrence of election-related violence between ethnic or religious communities has generated a burgeoning literature on ‘the dark side’ of democracy. This literature provides convincing accounts of how political competition incentivizes politicians to foment violence. Yet such elite-oriented approaches are less convincing in explaining why and how political elites succeed in mobilizing people who do not share their concern for electoral benefits. This article addresses this challenge by relating the capacity of politicians to foment violence to the everyday functioning of patronage networks. Using ethnographic fieldwork to compare violent and nonviolent areas during Hindu–Muslim violence in Gujarat (2002) and Christian–Muslim violence in North Maluku (1999–2000), I find that the informal networks through which citizens gain access to state benefits (‘patronage networks’) shape patterns of election-related violence between religious communities. Politicians succeeded in fomenting violence in areas where citizens depended strongly on ethnicized patronage networks, while violence was averted in areas where state–citizen interaction was organized through networks that bridge religious divides. Interpreting this finding, I argue that patronage networks generate both infrastructure and incentives to organize violence. They provide the infrastructure for violence because their everyday functioning generates interdependencies between politicians and local followers that facilitate the instigation and organization of violence. Patronage networks also generate incentives for violence because when prevailing patronage networks bridge social divides, politicians relying on these networks have an interest in preventing communal violence. When socio-economic changes cause patronage networks to become organized along religious divides, as occurred in the violent areas in Gujarat and North Maluku, divisive political discourse is more likely to resonate and political actors are more likely to benefit electorally from communal violence. In this manner this article provides a novel explanation for both subnational variation in patterns of violence and the hardening of social divisions.

Hindu–Muslim violence in unexpected places: theory and evidence from rural India

ABSTRACT What factors explain the recent rise of Hindu–Muslim violence in rural India? Using the 2013 communal riots that broke out in Uttar Pradesh's Muzaffarnagar and Shamli districts as a theory-building case, this article advances two arguments to account for this important development. First, it holds that these clashes must be understood against the backdrop of the high-stakes 2014 general elections, which generated incentives for several national and regional parties to use conflict as a means to win votes. Second, the paper demonstrates that politicians chose to strategically instrumentalize violence among rural—rather than urban—communities because of the lower likelihood of backlash expected from rural voters. In contrast to urban voters, who have repeatedly experienced such clashes and who have developed a willingness to punish violence-wielding politicians, rural voters' relative lack of exposure to communal riots made them both more easily mobilizable and less likely to sanction elites in 2013. Qualitative data collected through in-depth interviews, official government records, and newspaper reports from two rural (Muzaffarnagar and Shamli) and one urban district (Meerut) in Uttar Pradesh as well as New Delhi provide support for these arguments.

The Re-ethnicisation of Politics in Myanmar and the Making of the Rohingya Ethnicity Paradox

In Myanmar, hostilities between the majority Burmese and the minority Rakhine people on one side and the minority Rohingya on the other side have been common, but violence has persisted and even increased during the unstable transition away from an authoritarian regime. Most Burmese citizens appear to be united behind the ruling elites on the Rohingya issue. Why is the violence assumed to be of ethnic origin and whose interests are served by the acceptance of such violent acts as routine events? The article attempts to seek answers by following Brass’s framework on Hindu–Muslim violence in India. Its purpose is to examine which actors, mechanisms and institutional developments have been dominant and significant in the re-ethnicisation of the political landscape in Myanmar and how this has consolidated the formation of a contentious and contested specific Rohingya group identity among many Arakanese Muslims.

Mapping the self: challenges of insider research in a riot-affected city and strategies to improve data quality

Ethnic riots in India rarely lead to convictions of perpetrators and redress for victims. By implication, antagonisms prevail years after violence has ceased and victims often find themselves sharing everyday spaces with their attackers. The task of identifying the risk factors leading to ethnic violence as well as the nuances of coexistence for individuals ridden with memories of violence and prejudice is rife with methodological and ethical challenges. Concerns surrounding data quality are enhanced when the researcher is also an insider. In a study spanning 26 months (undertaken between 2010 and 2015), I examine the challenges of an insider researcher in the context of Hindu–Muslim violence that occurred in Gujarat in 2002, and offer techniques to improve data quality. Strategies include the cross-verification of sources within official data; interviewing respondents in group and individual settings to address the attitudinal fallacy; and employing respondent-empowered cognitive maps. I argue that visual data, such as cognitive maps, enable a better understanding of abstract social concepts and also facilitate a balance between distance and involvement for the insider researcher.

Hindu-Christian Conflict in India: Globalization, Conversion, and the Coterminal Castes and Tribes

While Hindu-Muslim violence in India has received a great deal of scholarly attention, Hindu-Christian violence has not. This article seeks to contribute to the analysis of Hindu-Christian violence, and to elucidate the curious alliance, in that violence, of largely upper-caste, anti-minority Hindu nationalists with lower-status groups, by analyzing both with reference to the varied processes of globalization. The article begins with a short review of the history of anti-Christian rhetoric in India, and then discusses and critiques a number of inadequately unicausal explanations of communal violence before arguing, with reference to the work of Mark Taylor, that only theories linking local and even individual social behaviors to larger, global processes like globalization can adequately honor the truly “webby” nature of the social world.

Implications of an Economic Theory of Conflict: Hindu-Muslim Violence in India

We model intergroup conflict driven by economic changes within groups. We show that if group incomes are low, increasing group incomes raises violence against that group and lowers violence generated by it. We then apply the model to data on Hindu-Muslim violence in India. Our main result is that an increase in per capita Muslim expenditures generates a large and significant increase in future religious conflict. An increase in Hindu expenditures has a negative or no effect. These findings speak to the origins of Hindu-Muslim violence in post-Independence India.

Networks of Death and Militant Vegetarianism: The Mechanics of Communal Violence in Gujarat

This review essay examines two recently published books that explore communal violence in Gujarat: Ward Berenschot's Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State and Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi's Pogrom in Gujarat: Hindu Nationalism and Anti-Muslim Violence in India.

Local Meets Global

Urban theorists assert that cities need to be understood not only in terms of their internal systems but also in terms of their national and global connections. This study provides an analysis of these global connections for the city of Ahmedabad, India, through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. It highlights three “events” and discusses their international ramifications: the arrival of Gandhi in 1915; the increasingly global reach of local manufacturing and cultural institutions; and the international censure of the Hindu–Muslim violence in the city, especially in 2002. It closes with a plea to urban historians to heed the arguments of the theoreticians and consider fully the significance of global connections in the study of individual urban histories.

The making of a political stronghold: A Dalit neighbourhood’s exit from the Hindu Nationalist riot system

This article highlights the contribution of political competition and people’s movements to the dynamics of symbolization of space. In India, the symbolic appropriation of space represents an important yet under-explored local repertoire of collective action that impacts the contemporary reproduction of local subjectivities. This case study narrates the political conflict that occurred in a Dalit (Untouchable) basti of the North Indian city of Kanpur (Uttar Pradesh). One political faction of the youth sought to overpower the Hindu Nationalist faction and turn the neighbourhood from an armed bastion of the Hindu nationalist politics and Hindu-Muslim violence into a stronghold of Dalit emancipation. Interrogating the notion of political stronghold, the study documents the techniques and stakes involved as well as the power networks that were mobilized in this localized political battle, which contributed to the defeat of a local riot system .

De komst van de chamchas: staatsvorming en etnisch geweld in Gujarat, India

India’s Hindu-Muslim violence is rarely spontaneous, as this violence is usually fomented by politicians who aim to reap electoral benefits from the ensuing polarisation. This article aims to explain the capacity of politicians to instigate violence, by relating Gujarat’s 2002 violence to the way Gujarat’s state has developed over the last 200 years. As new state institutions developed their capacity to deliver various public services, older public institutions like the guilds (the mahajans) and the neighbourhood committees (the pol panch) gradually lost their functions and authority. As local communities became more integrated in a broader public sphere, they gradually became politicised, since they became more dependent on political patronage channels to gain access to the budding state. This dependency facilitated violence: the need for political intermediaries generated incentives for local inhabitants to contribute to the violence, while it gave politicians the necessary local authority and local contacts to foment violence. This makes Hindu-Muslim violence a modern phenomenon: the preconditions for violence discussed in this article – democratic political competition, the dependence of citizens on political mediation, and the politicization of neighbourhood life – are all by-products of the development of modern state institutions.

From Padosi to My Name is Khan: The Portrayal of Hindu–Muslim Relations in South Asian Films

The portrayal of Hindu–Muslim relations in Hindi-language films has been a topic of discussion in several recent writings; for instance, in Chadha and Kavoori [2008], Hirji [2008], Ghuman [2006] and Rai [2003]. These articles mostly argue that Muslims in Hindi films are “exoticized, marginalized, and demonized and they are portrayed as the ‘other.’” To test this thesis I surveyed several films and found that Hindi films themselves are being stereotyped, based on their recent portrayal of Muslims. As an example, I will first examine an article by Booth [2004] which argues that Muslims were the political Other even in some older films. I will then compare Mishra's article [2002] with Lal [1998] in light of the film Khalnayak; and then, following Lal, I will provide my own analysis of some films that are woven around the relationship of Hindus with Muslims but have escaped the attention of film scholars. Although the recent upsurge in “cinepatriotism” and “Hinduness” in Hindi films is (rightly) criticized by scholars, in this article, I look at examples from several films to argue that secularism, embraced by films such as Padosi [1941] and Hum ek hain [1946], has been maintained by most Indian filmmakers. I discuss these films in four categories: India–Pakistan partition, Hindu–Muslim violence, Hindu–Muslim friendly relations, and films about modern Muslim communities. Although most of the films I discuss are Hindi ones I will also make brief references to Pakistani, Bengali-language and other South Asian films.

The Spatial Distribution of Riots: Patronage and the Instigation of Communal Violence in Gujarat, India

Summary Why does violence erupt in some areas and not in others? The Hindu–Muslim violence that engulfed Gujarat in 2002 did not spread uniformly throughout the state, as a sizable number of towns and villages remained unaffected by the killing, looting, and raping that took place. This article takes up the different levels of violence within one city as a clue to understand the local dynamics that lead to riots. This ethnographic study of events in a violent and a peaceful locality suggests that violence is more likely in neighborhoods where inhabitants gain access to state institutions through patronage networks that derive electoral gains from communal violence.

Rioting as Maintaining Relations: Hindu–Muslim Violence and Political Mediation in Gujarat, India

This article discusses the role that local politicians played during the 2002 Hindu–Muslim violence in Gujarat, India. I argue that the capacity and interests of political actors to instigate and organise communal rioting is closely related to their capacity to provide access to state resources. The cooperation during the riots between politicians and various types of rioters – from local criminals, Hindu-nationalist activists, neighbourhood leaders to police officials – can be understood in the light of the daily functioning of the local patronage networks that help citizens deal with state institutions.

The Mosaic of Violence – An Introduction

Bakonyi, J., Bliesemann DeGuevara, B. (2011). The Mosaic of Violence: An Introduction. In B. Bliesemann de Guevara, & J. Bakonyi (Eds.), A Micro-Sociology of Violence: Deciphering patterns and dynamics of collective violence. (pp. 1-17). Routledge.

Disciplining the Body, Disciplining the Body-Politic: Physical Culture and Social Violence among North Indian Wrestlers

In the early evening of 14 September 1989, ferocious Hindu-Muslim rioting broke out in the city of Kota in the north Indian state of Rajasthan. The rioting started during the Hindu festival of Anant Chaturdashi, while celebrants were taking out religious processions through the city. Although most of the violence occurred during that first night, it would be another three days before the Indian army could restore an uneasy peace to the city and nearly three weeks more would pass before the military curfew that eventually confined city's inhabitants to their houses for all but a few hours a day was fully lifted. The mayhem claimed the lives of twenty-six individuals and left a further ninety-nine injured in hospital. Countless more ‘walking wounded’ were treated on an outpatient basis in local dispensaries or by friends or neighbors. In addition, vandalism, arson, and looting caused property losses exceeding ten million rupees. Although Muslims constituted only 9 percent of the city's population of roughly half-a-million, they suffered the vast majority of the casualties and bore a disproportionate amount of property loss. By convention we commonly refer to such rioting as ‘Hindu-Muslim violence,’ but the parity implied in this formula is deeply misleading. The vast majority of victims were Muslims.

Social conflict and the neoliberal city: a case of Hindu–Muslim violence in India

In an era of globalisation the ‘global’ is very much implicated in the ‘local’. Local events like conflicts therefore need to be understood in the context of the dynamics of globalisation. This paper argues that neoliberal globalisation undergoes a thorough grounding in accordance with the pre‐existing socio‐cultural and economic specificities of places, which impact upon inter‐community alienation and conflict. Using four case studies from a Hindu–Muslim conflict in a neoliberalising city, Ahmedabad, India, this paper illustrates how open market policies are implicated in local industrial restructuring and urban renewal that simultaneously utilise place‐specific ethnocentrism to exclude and fragment the poor.