Paul R. Brass

These essays focus on the various forms of collective violence that have occurred in India during the past six decades, which include riots, pogroms, and genocide. It is argued that these various forms of violence must be understood not as spontaneous outbreaks of passion, but as productions by organized groups. Moreover, it is also evident that government and its agents do not always act to control violence, but often engage in or permit gratuitous acts of violence against particular groups under the cover of the imperative of restoring order, peace, and tranquility. This has certainly been the case in numerous incidents of collective violence in India where curfew restrictions have been used for just such purposes. In this context, secularism constitutes a countervailing practice, and a set of values that are essential to maintain balance in a plural society where the organization of intergroup violence is endemic, persistent, and deadly.

Riots, Pogroms, and Genocide in Modern India

Forms of Collective Violence

The Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics examines key issues in politics of the five independent states of the South Asian region: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal. Written by experts in their respective areas, this Handbook introduces the reader to the politics of South Asia by presenting the prevailing agreements and disagreements in the literature. In the first two sections, the Handbook provides a comprehensive introduction to the modern political history of the states of the region and an overview of the independence movements in the former colonial states. The other sections focus on the political changes that have occurred in the postcolonial states since independence, as well as the successive political changes in Nepal during the same period, and the structure and functioning of the main governmental and non-governmental institutions, including the structure of the state itself (unitary or federal), political parties, the judiciary, and the military. Further, the contributors explore several aspects of the political process and political and economic change, especially issues of pluralism and national integration, political economy, corruption and criminalization of politics, radical and violent political movements, and the international politics of the region as a whole. This unique reference work provides a comprehensive survey of the state of the field and is an invaluable resource for students and academics interested in South Asian Studies, South Asian Politics, Comparative Politics and International Relations.

India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, and Nepal

Routledge Handbook of South Asian Politics

Chronic Hindu-Muslim rioting in India has created a situation in which communal violence is both so normal and so varied in its manifestations that it would seem to defy effective analysis. Paul R. Brass, one of the world�s preeminent experts on South Asia, has tracked more than half a century�s riots in the north Indian city of Aligarh. This book is the culmination of a lifetime�s thinking about the dynamics of institutionalized intergroup violence in northern India, covering the last three decades of British rule as well as the entire post-Independence history of Aligarh. Brass exposes the mechanisms by which endemic communal violence is deliberately provoked and sustained. He convincingly implicates the police, criminal elements, members of Aligarh�s business community, and many of its leading political actors in the continuous effort to �produce� communal violence. Much like a theatrical production, specific roles are played, with phases for rehearsal, staging, and interpretation. In this way, riots become key historical markers in the struggle for political, economic, and social dominance of one community over another. In the course of demonstrating how riots have been produced in Aligarh, Brass offers a compelling argument for abandoning or refining a number of widely held views about the supposed causes of communal violence, not just in India but throughout the rest of the world. An important addition to the literature on Indian and South Asian politics, this book is also an invaluable contribution to our understanding of the interplay of nationalism, ethnicity, religion, and collective violence, wherever it occurs.

The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India

The Congress Party in Uttar Pradesh

Factional Politics in an Indian State

C. A. Bayly

John F. Richards

Gordon Johnson

The New Cambridge History of India

Ethnic Groups and the State

Charan Singh and Congress Politics, 1967 to 1987, the third and final volume in the trilogy of The Politics of Northern India, begins with the dramatic political event of the fall of the Congress in the most critical state of UP and the formation of the first non-Congress government. This event was of the utmost concern to Indira Gandhi, for she could not rule the country without a firm political base in the most populous state of the country. Insofar as Charan Singh was concerned, it marked the beginning of his rise to power in the state and the beginning also of the dramatic and complicated struggle between him and Indira Gandhi. The current volume, like the previous volumes, is based upon the author’s access to all the critical documents in Charan Singh’s political life, an access that was provided to him by Charan Singh personally, and which he has used specifically for this work on his political life.

Charan Singh and Congress Politics, 1967 to 1987

An Indian Political Life

As collective violence erupts in many regions throughout the world, we often hear media reports that link the outbreaks to age-old ethnic or religious hostilities, thereby freeing the state, its agents, and its political elites from responsibility. Paul Brass encourages us to look more closely at the issues of violence, ethnicity, and the state by focusing on specific instances of violence in their local contexts and questioning the prevailing interpretations of them. Through five case studies of both rural and urban public violence, including police-public confrontations and Hindu-Muslim riots, Brass shows how, out of many possible interpretations applicable to these incidents, government and the media select those that support existing relations of power in state and society. Adopting different modes--narrator, detective, and social scientist--Brass treats incidents of collective violence arising initially out of common occurrences such as a drunken brawl, the rape of a girl, and the theft of an idol, and demonstrates how some incidents remain localized while others are fit into broader frameworks of meaning, thereby becoming useful for upholders of dominant ideologies. Incessant talk about violence and its implications in these circumstances contributes to its persistence rather than its reduction. Such treatment serves in fact to mask the causes of violence, displace the victims from the center of attention, and divert society's gaze from those responsible for its endemic character. Brass explains how this process ultimately implicates everyone in the perpetuation of systems of violence.

Text and Context in the Representation of Collective Violence

Theft of an Idol

Riots and Pogroms presents comparative studies of riots and pogroms in the twentieth century in Russia, Germany, Israel, India, and the United States, with a comparative, historical, and analytical introduction by the editor. The focus of the book is on the interpretive process which follows after the occurrence of riots and pogroms, rather than on the search for their causes. The concern of the editor and contributors is with the struggle for control over the meaning of riotous events, for the right to represent them properly.

Riots and Pogroms

As collective violence erupts in many regions throughout the world, we often hear media reports that link the outbreaks to age-old ethnic or religious hostilities, thereby freeing the state from responsibility. Through five case studies of both rural and urban public violence, political scientist Paul Brass shows that government and the media often select and focus most on those that support existing relations of power in state and society.

Paul R. Brass

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