Organizer: Ashutosh Varshney, Harvard University
Chair: Myron Weiner, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Discussant: Susanne H. Rudolph, University of Chicago
Most studies of Hindu-Muslim relations in post-independence India fall into two categories: those dealing with urban India focus almost entirely on riots, and the ones dealing with rural India sketch the peaceful co-existence of Hindus and Muslims. Three kinds of questions have either not been asked, or not empirically investigated. The first question is inter-spatial: How does one explain that communal violence, on the whole, tends to break out repeatedly in some towns but not in others? To the list of riot-prone towns-Aligarh, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Meerut, Kanpur-one can add an equally long list of peaceful towns, such as Lucknow, Saharanpur, Calicut, Murshidabad, Ajmer. The second question is inter-temporal: How does one explain the ebbs and flows of violence? There are towns where violence was endemic but has declined in recent years. Between 1971-83, Aligarh, for example, had eight riot-years. Between 1984-93, riots in Aligarh were limited to two years only. Eight years were peaceful. Even after the demolition of the Babri mosque, Aligarh, historically one of the most riot-prone towns of India, remained quiet. What explains inter-temporal variation? The third question is discursive: Is there a struggle over the "meaning" of violence? How are the riots interpreted? Who controls the "meaning" of recurring violence, and why? This last question has been partially raised-for example, by Gyanendra Pandey-but no one has so far systematically sought to identify patterns of meaning that may emerge from communal violence in towns as far apart as Kanpur on the one hand and Bombay on the other.
The last ten years have raised considerable concern about the state of Hindu-Muslim relations in contemporary India. It is important to raise these issues so that we understand the dynamics of Hindu-Muslim relations better. Based on new research conducted over the last few years, this panel addresses the questions raised above. The abstracts are as follows.
Paul Brass, University of Washington, Seattle
Kanpur city experienced several communal riots in the aftermath of the destruction of the mosque at Ayodhya in December 1992. The pattern was similar to Bombay in the sense that the initial actions were begun by Muslims coming into the streets in protest against the mosque demolition. A second stage followed in which large crowds of Hindus moved against Muslims. The bulk of murders occurred in the second stage.
In the midst of the terror, murder and destruction, Kala Bacha emerged as the central figure. For the Muslims, he was a killer, for the BJP a hero. The stories told by and about Kala Bacha, who was himself killed in a bomb attack in February 1994, traverse the boundaries of truth and falsehood, lies and myth, in the ongoing struggle in contemporary Indian politics and society to capture and control the meaning of those recurring murderous events defined as "Hindu-Muslim riots."
Ashutosh Varshney, Harvard University
Hyderabad and Lucknow have much in common. They have historically been centers of the so-called syncretistic Hindu-Muslim culture. They were ruled by Muslim Nawabs for a long time. Hindu and Muslim elites participated in the culture of the court, spoke and were instructed in Urdu, and shrines were shared by the masses of both communities. Finally, and significantly for post-1947 democratic politics, the proportion of Hindus and Muslims in the populations of the two towns have been roughly the same since 1951.
A remarkable difference, however, marks the two cities. Lucknow's last Hindu-Muslim riot took place in the 1920s, an event happening so far back that it is not even part of the town's memory. Lucknow saw no riots during partition, nor after the demolition of the Babri mosque. Contrariwise, Hyderabad, its communal peace first broken in 1937, has not been able to return to its historic co-existence. It has turned into one of the most riot-prone towns of independent India. Why have the two cities diverged so much? Four factors emerge: differences in the remembered local history (as opposed to the same national history); complimentary relations between the Hindus and Muslims in the local economy of Lucknow as opposed to the adversarial economic relationship of Hyderabad; and the coalition-building strategies of local politicians.
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