Communalism

Abstract: The Production of Hindu-Muslim Violence in Contemporary India. By Paul R. Brass. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2003. 448p. 35.00 paper.Rioting in South Asia is commonly understood as a form of political activity, and the idea that it may not be spontaneous but planned is not a novel one. However, in The Production of Hindu Muslim Violence in Contemporary India, Paul Brass makes the more interesting claim that riot-prone cities are those that are marked by institutionalized systems that create, control, and direct the course of riots. He bases these ideas—developed in his earlier work Theft of an Idol—on four decades of research carried out in the northern Indian town of Aligarh, home to a sizable and historic Muslim community. Brass argues that polarizing issues or incidents by themselves do not lead to riots, but that a toxic mix of interested politicians, an existing discourse of communalism, an ineffective administration, and a specialized network that “produces” riots enhances the likelihood that such incidents will eventuate in riots. In describing this social construction of rioting, Brass highlights interesting features, such as the need for a group to dominate the narrative describing the riot, which establishes it as a defensive rather than offensive measure, thereby creating legitimacy for the violence.

Abstract: Emerging from the partition of India in 1947, Pakistan was a product of the first and perhaps the most successful of those twentieth-century movements which sought to bring about an Islamic transformation of the post-colonial state. But the evolution of Islam's role in the Pakistan movement has long been debated. This book examines the problem through a detailed study of Muslim politics in the Punjab - Pakistan's largest and most important province - in the decades leading up to India's partition. Gilmartin argues that an understanding of Muslim politics in this period depends on an understanding of the close interaction between the ideology and structure of the British colonial empire on the one hand, and the structure of Islamic organization and ideas on the other.The British imperial state rejected religion as a foundation for its central authority, yet its structure encouraged the development of forms of rural Islam adapted to local organization and to the hierarchical and mediatory ideology of the imperial state. At the same time, alien colonial domination encouraged the growth of "communalism" and eventually of Muslim "nationalism," particularly in Punjab's cities - thus posing new ideological challenges to the British Raj. The tensions inherent in the structure and ideology of colonial organization thus provide the backdrop for the study. Gilmartin's extensive use of private papers, biographies, and autobiographies of prominent as well as less prominent political leaders helps give this study a balanced viewpoint. He also draws on a range of popular and private Urdu materials that lend the book an authentic voice. This study will be welcomed by students of colonial empire and by those interested in Islam's role in the modern world.

Abstract: My choice of subject for this lecture arose from what I think might have been a matter of some interest to Kingsley Martin; as also from my own concern that the interplay between the past and contemporary times requires a continuing dialogue between historians working on these periods. Such a dialogue is perhaps more pertinent to post-colonial societies where the colonial experience changed the framework of the comprehension of the past from what had existed earlier: a disjuncture which is of more than mere historiographical interest. And where political ideologies appropriate this comprehension and seek justification from the pre-colonial past, there, the historian's comment on this process is called for. Among the more visible strands in the political ideology of contemporary India is the growth and acceptance of what are called communal ideologies. ‘Communal’, as many in this audience are aware, in the Indian context has a specific meaning and primarily perceives Indian society as constituted of a number of religious communities. Communalism in the Indian sense therefore is a consciousness which draws on a supposed religious identity and uses this as the basis for an ideology. It then demands political allegiance to a religious community and supports a programme of political action designed to further the interests of that religious community. Such an ideology is of recent origin but uses history to justify the notion that the community (as defined in recent history) and therefore the communal identity have existed since the early past.