Ethnicity, nationalism and violence in South Asia

Pacific Affairs

Volumn 71, Issue 3, 1998, Pages 377-395

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EID: 27844591757     PISSN: 0030851X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2761416     Document Type: Article

References (24)

1. To take just one example, see Rusell Hardin, OneForAlk The Logic of Group Conflict (Princeton. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1994).
2. In the South Asian context, these claims often had a colonial genealogy. For a discussion see Gyan Pandey's classic, The Bigoted Julaha," Economic and Political Weekly, 15 January, 1983.
3. The classic account of this is Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968) ; for an application to India, see
4. Ami Kohli, Democracy and Discontent (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
5. It is symptomatic of "structuralist explanations" that while Kohli's rich book predicted the increasing strains on Indian democracy, it said comparatively little on the forms that would take, especially the rise of the BJP.
6. Sec Gyan Pandey, "The Colonial Construction of 'Communalism': British Writings on Banaras in the Nineteenth Century," in Veena Das, ed., Mirrors of Violence (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 94-134. This excellent volume is a useful companion to the books under review.
7. On this see, Harjot Oberoi's fascinating The Construction of Religious Boundaries: Culture, Identity and Diversity in the Sikh Tradition (Delhi: Oxford Univeristy Press, 1994).
8. Why communities seek to have their corporate identites recognized as "nations," is itself a matter that would bear investigating. In my essay, "Liberalism, Nation and Empire" (forthcoming) I have attempted to trace this aspiration to the hierarchies set up in imperial discourse in the nineteenth century where posession of "nationhood" came to be aligned with being "civilized."
9. Religions in their historical manifestations have always been concerned with idenitity. What I think is new is the fact that they seem almost soleley concerned with it: their raison d'etre is to establish themselves as nations. For this reason I disagree with Tambiah's claim that now "the search for religious salvation and congregational solidarity is pursued through participation in public ritual that seeks salvation for the collectivity"(Leveling, p. 32). Most of the politically salient religious movements in South Asia make no pretenses of even searching for salvation and are instead characterized by what Simone Weil once called the "loveless idolatory of the nation."
10. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value, PeterWmch, trans. (Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1980), p. 13e.
11. Of course, the "faith" and "sentiment" are conjoined with the discourse of facticity, but the pressure to invoke the latter is itself striking. Chapter 2 of Daniel's Charred Lullabies contains interesting observations on the presence or absence of history in South Asia. These ought to be read in conjuntion with
12. J. N. Mohanty, "Philosophy of History and its Presuppositions," in T. M. P. Mahadevan and G. Cairns, eds., Contemporary Indian Philosophers of History (Calcutta: World Press, 1977), p. 251,
13. and Sheldon Pollock, "Mimansa and the Problem of History in Traditional India," Journal of the American Oriental Satiety, vol. 109, no. 4 (1989), pp.603-10.
14. Daniel's contrast between the "historical" and the "mythic" is not entirely clear but it is not meant to map onto a contrast between "true" and "false" but fundamentally as a contrast between a way of "seeing the world" and a way of "being in it." The latter is what Daniel calls "an ontic discursive practice" that is fundamentally embodied in social practices; the former is a "theoretical discusrive practice" that is fundamentally epistemological (Charred, pp. 51-52).
15. For a profound elaboration of this argument, see Ashis Nandy, "History's Forgotten Doubles," History and Theory, Theme Issue no. 34 (1995), pp. 44-66.
16. Although it is to Kakar's credit that lie studies both Hindu nationalism and what, for want of a better word, he calls Muslim fundamentalism, the political strength of the two is, at this juncture, by no means identical. Hindu nationalism, if enacted in its virulent forms, is a greater threat.
17. Sudipta Kaviraj, The Unhappy Consciousness (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995) p. 107.
18. Michel Foucault, "On the Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress," in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon, 1984), p. 343.
19. See A.Varshney, "Postmodernism, Civic Engagement and Ethnic Conflict," Comparative Politics (January 1997), pp.1-19.
20. This passage is fraught with difficulties. First, Vajpayee was not at Ayodhya on 6 December. See Chris tophejaffrelot's excellent account, The Hindu Nationalist Movement in India (New York: Columbia Univeristy Press, 1996), p. 457.
21. Second, "Joshi" belongs to the BJP, not the VHP (perhaps Tambiah means Singhal). Third, if Nandy et al. are correct, the big leaders named in this passage had left the site, though not Ayodhya, by 11:45 A.M. (Creating, p. 192), so the reference of the term "present" is more ambiguous than one might recognize. Both Nandy and his collaborators, such as Christophe Jafferlot, seem to suggest a presumption in favor of the BJP leadership's foreknowledge of the planned demolition. Both, however, are willing to recognize ambiguities in this matter. Incidentally, Tambiah speaks of Babur as having ecumenically reached out to Hinduism (Leveling, p. 19). He is probably thinking of Akbar.
22. Chandan Mitra is a distinguished journalist, but Nandy et. al. are willing to give little credence to his reporting which seems to suggest that at least in some significant quarters of the BJP, the demolition may have come as a matter of surprise. See Chandan Mitra, "Control Room That Had No Control," Hindustan Times, 8 December 1992.
23. Ashutosh Varshney and Steven I. Wilkinson, "Hindu Muslim Riots 1960-93," Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Project No. 12,1996.
24. I don't think Kakar means to deny the presence of rape altogether. He is only too painfully and movingly aware of partition for that. Rather he wants to be more careful about specifying the circumstances under which it happens. And there are curious passages on pages 136 and 137 that suggest that moral attitudes towards those who rape during riots are an issue amongst his informants. Kakar does not remark on these. Why would this be an issue if rape were entirely absent?