Books
SOCIAL MOVEMENTS IN INDIA: Poverty, Power and Politics edited by Raka Ray and Mary Fainsod Katzenstien. Oxford University Press, Delhi, 2005.
STRATEGIES to remove poverty have always occupied a central position in Indian discourse, not surprising since close to a third of our populace is still below the poverty line. Policy planners have, however, only focused on the differential roles of either the state or the market in attending to this objective. If earlier, greater reliance was on the state operating not only through planned allocation of resources but also through ownership and control of the ‘commanding heights of the economy’, the pendulum today has swung towards the market, including granting a greater role to foreign capital.
In all of this, what is the role of the public, in particular social movements? Is the public only to be a recipient, an object of public policy, expressing its appreciation or otherwise through episodic elections or protests, or can it play a more pro-active role through organised intervention? The role of the National Advisory Committee in overseeing the implementation of the Common Minimum Programme of the UPA regime, helping steer through crucial legislations on the right to information, employment, food and education clearly suggests that social movements and their representatives have carved out for themselves a new role in the political economy of India. The volume under consideration offers a fresh look at public activism in India, examining both the changing strategies of movement actors over the last five decades as also the shifts in thinking influencing their choice of strategies.
In asking the questions related to the persistence of poverty and inequality, scholars of political economy have either stressed the capture of state power by dominant interests prompting thereby an accommodationist politics that neglects the real interests of the poor; the inefficacy of party politics, in particular the factionalism within the Congress, contributing to an insufficient institutionalization of the state; the ‘excess of democratic pressures’ caused by a fractionalisation of the polity and political process which mitigate against a coherent long-term policy of growth and poverty removal; or, more recently, a conceptual incompatibility between the institutions we gave to ourselves and the people. Whatever the merit of these different explanatory frames, all of them fail to give due regard to the role of organized political action outside the framework of electoral politics in influencing policy choices and action.
Not that the points of view of movement scholars are any different. Most movements and their theoreticians either accept the primacy of the state and thus envision their role as a corrective one or focus on sectoral concerns without an integrative vision that could provide clues of how to address deep-seated poverty. If anything, the increasing decentring of the state, a greater reliance on the market, and the emergence of new actors, including transnational ones, has further complicated the picture. For today, in addition to class, movements have to address concerns of identity – caste, ethnicity, gender – as also factor in issues relating to the environment. What we have as a consequence of this shifting of master frames – from a democratic socialist consensus centred around the state to one of the market – is the development of a highly variegated set of movement strategies which the book identifies as repudiation, dilution, adaptation, reconfiguration to adoption and espousal. While it can safely be asserted that most social movements in India still operate within the broad template of the early Nehruvian years – a commitment to democracy, equality and poverty removal – how effectively their specific strategies address these key concerns remains a matter of debate. It is this problematic that these essays seek to address.
The first set of essays by Vivek Chibber, Tanika Sarkar and Patrick Heller focus on movement strategies in an era defined by Nehruvian consensus. Chibber, in foregrounding organized labour, shows how the trade union movement permitted itself to be appropriated by the priorities of the Congress party. Not just the INTUC, but all central trade unions (HMS, AITUC) accepted for themselves a similar role – permitting party concerns to define the union agenda, with clearly negative consequences. Tanika Sarkar’s essay on the Hindu Right on the other hand shows how the Sangh Parivar and its politics, despite seeking autonomy from the Congress, was marginalised by the Nehruvian master discourse. Both its questionable role in the freedom struggle and the unsavoury association with the Mahatma’s assassination ensured that in our early years Sanghist politics remained a peripheral presence. But it is Heller’s analysis of developments in Kerala that demonstrate the possibilities of a praxis which seeks autonomy from the Congress frame while fiercely adhering to a redistributive agenda that enabled the province to show amazingly positive results in social development, despite the absence of high economic growth. It is interesting how all these three strains of experience continue to mould the vision of social movements even now.
It is the middle years – between 1964 and 1984 – that witnessed the greatest rupture in Indian political economy. Even as the ideological underpinning of poverty alleviation was granted supremacy, the key vehicle for social transformation – the Congress Party – fractured, thereby opening up spaces for a differentiated activism. Not only did the country experience the Naxalite upsurge but also saw the emergence of the dalit and women’s movements and subsequently the struggles around the environment. The essays by Mary John, Gopal Guru and Anuradha Chakravorty, and Amita Baviskar explore different facets of these movements – in particular how the earlier focus on class and poverty removal came to be mediated by concerns of gender and caste. Not surprisingly, this new emphasis on identity complicated not only the objectives before social movements but also altered our perceptions of what we were willing to classify as ‘progressive and just’.
This was also the phase of the emergence of non-party politics, as different movements and agencies sought autonomy from political parties and elections as also the earlier obsessive concern with the capture of state power (including through revolution) as the favoured route towards social transformation. Surprisingly however, it is only Baviskar who examines how the emergence of new social actors alters not just strategies of action but even the vision of a desirable order.
The next two essays by Gail Omvedt and Ron Herring more directly address the question of the role of social movements in the era of market and religious nationalism, all of which necessitated a shift of relationship with the Indian state. Nevertheless, as the final essay by Neema Kudva (‘Strong States, Strong NGOs’, based on case studies of three NGOs in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and West Bengal) shows, the effectiveness of an NGO in addressing poverty alleviation depends not only on its organizational capacity and flexibility, but also ‘ironically on the extent to which the state within which it is located is sympathetic to a pro-poor politics.’ Possibly that is why, despite so little sympathy for autonomous NGO activism, the Left Front led West Bengal seems to have done better in poverty alleviation.
An effective democratic strategy for poverty removal and social justice demands an interplay between state, market and civil society. Focusing differentially on any one of the three is not only inefficacious but distortionary. Fortunately, as the experience of decentralised planning in Kerala or the role of the National Advisory Committee at the Centre shows, at least some sections of our policy-making elite as also leaders of organized movements, seem to be learning the benefits of collaborative action between movements, state and market. A failure to do so can only move us in a direction of greater social strife if not social fascism.
Despite its intellectual rigour and ethnographic detail, it is doubtful that this book will appeal to the growing constituency of civil society activists. I suspect this is because the activist community is far too caught up with its different agendas to reflect on the broader implications of their sectoral interventions. And that will be a loss for without an engagement with the emerging master frames of discourse, discrete interventions are unlikely to make a societal impact.
Harsh Sethi
BOOKLESS IN BAGHDAD AND OTHER WRITINGS ABOUT READING by Shashi Tharoor. Viking-Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2005.
IT is interesting to get an insight into a writer and a diplomat and his multiple representations of everyday reality. A carefully crafted ruminating wit marks the tone of this book. A delightful account of the various shades of life and writing, Tharoor’s book brings to the fore a wide range of interests in books, people and cultures. As one of the foremost contemporary Indian expatriates, Tharoor has earned a formidable reputation. Bookless in Baghdad is a collection of essays previously published in leading national dailies, international journals and magazines.
This slim book is divided into five parts. Part one, ‘Inspirations’, begins with Tharoor’s ‘Growing up with books in India’ as a child of middle class parents with a passion for books. It is followed by part two and three, subsequently titled ‘Reconsiderations’ and ‘The Literary Life’. Written with a very intimate hand the essays explore the writer’s positive impressions of literary giants like Pablo Neruda and Pushkin on one hand alongside a scathing critique of R.K. Narayan, Nirad C. Chaudhuri and Kipling on the other. Part four of the book is ‘Appropriations’ and the last is ‘Interrogations’.
Tharoor interrogates the meaning of India as a celebration of diversity: ‘…if America is a melting-pot, then to me India is a thali, a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different and does not necessarily mix with the next, but they belong together on the same plate, and they complement each other in making the meal a satisfying repast’ (107). Tharoor celebrates ‘Rushdie’s tongue’, his ‘free, unrestricted imagination’, his ‘pluralism and purity’ together with his ‘astonishing new voice’ and is candid enough to admit that ‘he is the head of my profession’ (92).
In many of these essays the writer exhibits an exaggerated interest in his own works and seeks to justify the challenges put forth by the readers to his kind of writing. In response to Aditya Bhattacharjea’s dismantling of the ‘St Stephen’s School of Literature’, followed by Harish Trivedi’s rigorous jabbing of a set of writers ‘Stephanians in taste, opinions and morals and in intellect’, Tharoor writes in defence and I quote him at length: ‘What is being described as "Stephanian" writing is, in fact, characteristic of an entire generation of Indian writers in English, who grew up without the shadow of the Englishman judging their prose, who used it unselfconsciously in their daily lives in independent India and who eventually wrote fiction in it as naturally as they would have written their university exams, their letters home or the notes they slipped to each other in their classrooms’ (191).
As a man in love with books and ideas, Tharoor mourns the death of IRB – Indian Review of Books – due to lack of funds: ‘Economics always trumps literature.’ Seemingly this is so not only in India but also in America. Drawing parallels between the two worlds, Tharoor raises pertinent issues ‘…unlike in the developing world, where illiteracy is predominantly a rural problem, in the US it occurs overwhelmingly in the inner cities, with a heavy concentration among the poor and those dependent on welfare’ (124).
As a Under Secretary-General of the UN, Shashi Tharoor is possibly one of the most privileged of the Indian writers in English. Wide exposure to different cultures and an abiding interest in reading and writing has shaped his daring perception of the world at large. Proud of his Malayali heritage, he accepts himself as a ‘Marunaadan Malayali’ – the expatriate Keralite who never left his bearings.
Tharoor writes not only of literature but also art and painting and the impact of globalization on human imagination. M.F. Husain’s artistic vision, his penchant for beauty and the delineation of it in art is introduced with an uncanny wit: ‘Husain’s elephants embody the magic of Kerala’ (41). ‘Books and Botox’ rues the steady decline and the cutting down of book review pages in popular American dailies. Rigours of a high profile job at the UN and the constant demands of a writer are being met with great élan.
However, it seems appropriate to point out that a major section of the book is Tharoor musing and defending his own writing, reflecting an undue anxiety long after the books have been published. One could have done without self-adulation and repeated references to his own books. Does it really matter what the American readers make of the cover of the American edition of Riot from Arcade or the Indian readers of Viking Penguin? In this age of marketing – books as goods – one is conscious of the strategies adopted by the publishers. But then, not every reader is a consumer and one would expect an informed reader like Shashi Tharoor to be able to survive bad reviews, if any. Does he not stress that writing to him comes as effortlessly as cow’s milk? ‘It’s inside me, it’s got to come out, and in a real sense I would suffer if I couldn’t’ (235-236).
The brief trip to Huesca for a cup of coffee is a moment of tender regard and poise; also a befitting tribute to George Orwell who never had the chance to fulfil his dream of returning to Huesca for the same.
It is far more interesting to read about his trip to the book souk, an enclosed bazaar in Baghdad. Named after famous tenth century poet Tayyeb Mutanabi, the street is famous for rare second-hand books. Visiting Baghdad in February 1998 on an official mission Tharoor writes, ‘The threat of bombs had been in the air for weeks, and Baghdad was full of journalists looking for news that would be obsolete in minutes. But here in the souk of Al Mutanabi there was a sense that there is a world beyond the immediate, that the wisdom of antiquity could prevail over the newsflash of the moment, that poetry could still trump poverty, that books might buffer you from bombs’ (207). It is also equally disturbing to learn that caught in the survival for existence the book lovers were forced to part with their treasure.
Interspersed with illuminating encounters through diverse literary and cultural landscapes this book attempts to bring together a variety of readings, most of them profoundly personal but eclectic and sometimes unduly harsh responses to authors and books. Of the two per cent of Indians who have ‘mastered’ English, a majority would still love to go through Narayan. Give them an R.K. Narayan any day for he does surpass ‘the growing tribe of writers’ who, despite their technical virtuosity and ‘English of freshness and vigour’, would be better-off if they grasped a trick or two in skill and simplicity, composure and complexity from the great master.
Difficult it may be to agree and accept the rationale behind some of his overstatements, but easy it is to engage in a sardonic tongue-in-cheek flavour (and Tharoor has it in abundance) which could indeed be a ‘satisfying repast’ for those keen to hear one of the distinct voices of our times.
Ranu Uniyal
INTERPRETING GLOBALISATION: Perspectives in International Relations edited by Rajen Harshe. Indian Council of Social Science Research, New Delhi and Rawat Publishers, Jaipur and New Delhi, 2004.
DESPITE the accelerated pace of knowledge production on and under globalisation, many facets of the globalisation-behemoth have only recently begun to unfold. One such facet is international relations. In the introductory essay, Rajen Harshe argues that since the last decade or so, globalisation in its accelerated form has been setting the pace and logic, and thereby shaping the contours of international relations. Of the thirteen papers which follow, six are on broad conceptual and thematic issues –theorising globalisation, transitions in world politics, changing notions of boundaries, advent of neo-liberalism and its repercussions, security predicament of evolving states in the developing world, and state powers under globalisation by Mikhail Ilyin, Bhupinder Brar, Rajen Harshe, Andrei Volodin, A.P. Rana and Prakash Sarangi respectively.
Treating globalisation as a lexiconcept and examining its various definitions and interpretations, Ilyin focuses on the contribution of French anthropologist Tielhard de Chardin who provided an early theorisation through the analytical concept of ‘planetisation’, or what Ilyin characterises as ‘geometry of Teilhardian world vision of a ‘world that encloses itself’ as a conceptual pattern for globalisation. Ilyin argues that many of the current ideas on globalisation had been conceptualised fairly well before the 1940s.
Brar cautions against labelling the ongoing transition as ‘the age of globalisation’. He further argues that the world may be globalising but is not yet globalised. We cannot know in advance what the world will look like when globalisation is complete; we cannot know when it will be complete or, more fundamentally, whether it will ever be complete. Moreover the existing structures of world politics will not be erased as some of them will survive the onslaught, damaged but not destroyed, and others will get submerged but, even so, will change in subtle and subterranean ways the terrains and the course of changes to come. Brar’s concludes that the ‘natural alliance’ of the cold war years between the Second World and the Third World is unlikely since the post-socialist and post-colonial elite have nothing in common to oppose. Through different trajectories the two have come to seek a share in the pie of what is, as far as they are concerned, a deterritorialised global core; the peripheries in the post-colonial world and the people in the post-socialist world do not have the luxury of deterritorialisation, and they have to fight their battles caught up pretty much where they are.
Harshe points out at the outset that after the disintegration of the Soviet Union the post-cold war world has undoubtedly witnessed the advent of a new phase in international relations, often described as the phase of globalisation. He justifies such blanket categorisation on two counts: (a) it signifies an opening up of the space that was held by the socialist world while challenging the very foundations as well as the functioning of capitalism all over the world; (b) as a corollary, it has shown a green signal to capitalism as a mode of development and as a world system to march and capture spaces that were still outside its control owing to the politics of cold war. Harshe’s main conclusions are: the end of the cold war has almost erased the ideological division of global boundaries and released fresh spaces for the expansion of world capitalism; any debate over the changing notions of boundaries under globalisation would be meaningless without some grasp over multi-layered and subtle nuances of capitalism as a world system; and that despite the emerging fraying of boundaries, the contemporary state continues to be the central source of drawing boundaries in contemporary international relations.
Volodin would have it that though the rationale of the neo-liberal project has been global economic unity, attempts to enforce it on market terms has deepened and widened divisions between and within nations. One of the inescapable consequences of globalisation is a massive concentration of wealth and power within the remote bodies beyond the reach of political accountability, making it problematic for nation-states and local communities to shape their economic, social, and environmental development. Volodin’s conclusion is that globalisation will meet the human requirements only in a pluralist democratic society in which power is accountable and decentralised, and both state and market are servants of society rather than society being the servant of either.
Rana’s main arguments run thus: globalisation implicates an increase in the non-territoriality of politics, with territory losing its role as the central organising premise of action and interaction as well as its steering capacity due to the increased salience of non-territorial issues and the emergence of non-political actors in a multi-actor universe. The asymmetry between the logic of globalisation, and the security problematic of developing countries, finds the latter ill-equipped to deal with the logic which globalisation ideally seeks to elicit from political formations across the world. It is in the area of political governance, and in realms of politico-strategic relations in the developing world that this asymmetry appears to become pronounced. Overall, the security problematic of developing countries ought to constitute a core concern in studies on globalisation.
Ploughing through the dialectic of state powers, Sarangi shows that emasculation of state powers would not necessarily come about in spite of economic integration at a global level, as globalisation has generated a new role for the state as a ‘competition state’. The related arguments run thus: the emergence of a competition state necessitates the expansion of state intervention and regulation in the name of competitiveness and marketisation. Institutions of the state are themselves promoting new forms of complex globalisation in an attempt to adapt state action to more effectively cope with global realities. Thus the growing tension between international pressures for homogenisation and the state’s compulsions to follow its own practices is likely to escalate political conflict within, among, and across political systems. The emergence of this new terrain of political conflict raises questions about the capacity of state institutions to embody communal solidarity, threatening the deeper legitimacy, institutionalised power, and social indebtedness of the state, which further undermines the capacity of the state to resist globalisation. The dynamic interaction of these paradoxes implies that consolidation and expansion of the state is itself driving a process of political globalisation, which in turn increases the pace of economic, social, and cultural globalisation.
The above six papers, which are important and make interesting reading, together knit well into the broad theme, the main title and the subtitle of the book. However, it would have been easier to appreciate these papers if they were thematically arranged.
The remaining seven papers are studies of regional specificities. They deal with perspectives on international economy in the context of SAARC, civil society activism in the age of globalisation, globalisation and the Indian nation-state, India’s federal experience in the northeastern states and globalisation, globalisation and Russia’s regions, regional identity in contemporary Russia, and food production as a strategy of globalisation of the Russian economy. These are by Arif A. Waqif, Sudha Mohan, B. Ramesh Babu, Sudhir Jacob George, Grigory Marchenko, Elena Meleshkina, and Alexander V. Akimov respectively. These papers though no doubt important, may fit better into a book on regional studies on globalisation.
As Harshe has indicated, the book is the outcome of a bi-national seminar on ‘Globalisation and International Relations: Indo-Russian Perspectives’, held under the auspices of the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Special Assistance Programme of the Department of Political Science, University of Hyderabad. Notwithstanding the unevenness of the nature and quality of the papers, probably inevitable, Harshe and the contributors to the book deserve compliments for ensuring that what ensued from their ‘dialogic discourses’ in the seminar matured to a modest effort to put together the perspectives of scholars from India and Russia on globalisation and international relations.
P. Radhakrishnan
RELIGIOUS POLITICS AND COMMUNAL VIOLENCE edited by Steven I. Wilkinson. Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2005.
JOURNALISM is known as ‘literature in a hurry’. But what would one call ‘academics in a hurry?’ Perhaps it is time a new word is added to the English lexicon to describe this phenomenon. Amrita Basu’s self-proclaimed ‘finely-grained analysis of the Bijnor riots’ makes a compelling case for this initiative, indicative of how NRI research should not be conducted. The editor too cannot escape his responsibility, as he does not seem to have invested any effort on the article. Perhaps he assumed that since reviewers of the book would in any case crosscheck the facts, he did not need to waste his time on such trivia.
Basu seems to have very little respect for facts. She informs us that in the 1988 municipal elections in Bijnor, a district town in western Uttar Pradesh, ‘a man named Zafar Khan was elected chairman.’ Also that ‘the two principal contenders for the position were Sandip Lal and Zafar Khan.’ However, facts speak otherwise. In the 1988 municipal elections, Javed Aftab was elected chairman defeating his nearest rival Nepal Singh Arya while Rajendra Pal Singh Kashyap came third. Nobody has ever heard of Sandip Lal. There is a gentleman active in local politics named Khan Zafar Sultan, but he was not a player in the 1988 municipal elections.
If one were to offer an example of magical realism in social science research, this article fits the bill. Basu names Deepak Mehra as ‘the editor and proprietor of the Bijnor Times’. Seventeen pages later, he not only becomes Senior Editor of the newspaper but is also described as one who contested the municipal elections. After another ten pages, Deepak Mehra is metamorphosed into Sunil Mehra who is now described as ‘editor of the Bijnor Times’. But the reality is very different. The Hindi daily, Bijnor Times, was founded by Babu Singh Chauhan, and his two sons – Chandramani Raghuvanshi and Suryamani Raghuvanshi – have been running the newspaper for over two decades, both as its proprietors and editors. Deepak Mehra and Sunil Mehra are unfamiliar names in the offices of this newspaper.
As the article unfolds, all of a sudden Aftab makes an appearance and no effort is made to introduce him. In fact, the two names Zafar Khan and Aftab are used as if they are interchangeable. Here is an example:
‘The close relationship between the economic and political dimensions of the riots is best explored by returning to the question of why Zafar Khan was the object of such virulent hatred. To the extent that caste Hindus provided any one explanation for the riots, it centred upon his role. Indeed, Aftab had received so many death threats that the district magistrate had hired a full-time bodyguard to protect him. What was most striking was that Aftab was so often accused not only of communalizing the local administration but also of subsequently instigating violence. However, nobody questioned the fact that Aftab had opposed and even boycotted Mulayam Singh Yadav’s rally. Nobody alleged that Aftab had even been at the site of the violence on 30 October or in the day that followed. What then made Zafar Khan so threatening?’
Throughout the article, fact and fiction are so inextricably mixed up that if one were to cite all the howlers, the entire review would have to be devoted to just this article. However, one just has to offer this shining example of footnoting. The following sentence has been assigned footnote number 19. ‘Sunil Mehra, the editor of the Bijnor Times, reported that the administration further confused people by misleading them about its own actions.’ However, when one consults footnote 19, one finds that the author of the report has been cited as Raghuvanshi! Could Isabel Allende better this performance?
The theme of this book remains as relevant and topical as it was in 1947 or even before. The communal rioting that took place in September-October 2005 in Mau in eastern Uttar Pradesh is a grim reminder of this ugly reality. Pramod Kumar’s article ‘Communal Riots in Mau Nath Bhanjan’, which presents a well-researched study of communal violence witnessed by this town in 1969 and 1984, reads as if it was written after the latest riots. It is the same old story of communal stereotyping, prejudice, economic rivalry, identity consciousness and bad faith. Little seems to have changed in post-independence India to reassure us about its secular foundations.
The book has been planned as a reader and it puts together extracts from already published books or articles on religious politics and communal violence. The editor of this volume, Steven I. Wilkinson has written a perceptive introduction. He points out that states adopt a somewhat lenient attitude towards those who mobilize people on the basis of religion and often offer them ‘institutional advantages’ in comparison to others who make economic, agricultural or other identities as the basis of their mobilization. Moreover, under the overarching umbrella of religion, politicians can hope to mobilize virtually all sections of its followers, irrespective of their caste, regional or linguistic differences. In fact this is what the BJP had hoped to achieve through the Ayodhya movement when V.P. Singh threw a spanner in its works by accepting caste-based reservations recommended by the Mandal Commission. Wilkinson also draws attention to the role played by communal riots in contributing to the growth of militancy in minority communities.
As the recent events at Mau bear out, religious processions often turn into ‘rituals of confrontation’. Pramod Kumar’s article on Mau, when read along with Christophe Jaffrelot’s study of religious processions and Hindu-Muslim riots, brings out in sharp relief the processes through which religiosity or religious group identities give rise to communal conflicts since communal propaganda exacerbates economic tensions, leading to the sudden eruption or careful organization of communal riots. Kumar tries to explain why Mau is riot-prone while the neighbouring town of Azamgarh is not so. Communal stereotyping, presence of lumpen elements in large numbers and growing economic rivalry between established Hindu traders and new Muslim entrants into various segments of trade account for the difference in the profiles of Mau and Azamgarh. Similar criteria can be applied to other riot-prone and riot-free towns as well.
As Paul Brass and some other contributors of this volume explicate in their respective studies, women are inextricably associated with group identity and sense of honour. In a large number of cases, real or imagined, abduction or harassment of a woman forms the backdrop of a communal riot. This results in the rape of women of the ‘other’ community during riots or, as Shail Mayaram shows in her study of Mewat at the time of Partition, state-sponsored violence against the target-community. Mayaram’s eye-opening account of the ethnic cleansing of Meos – who were known as half-Hindu and half-Muslim owing to their close association with the Krishna-centric social and religious events – by the princely states of Bharatpur and Alwar goes a long way to demolish the integrationist view of the Hindu communalists.
Ashutosh Varshney’s study underlines the fact that communal riots are essentially an urban phenomenon. But not all towns are riot-prone. In those towns where associational forms of civic engagement are fairly developed, riots do not take place. On the other hand, they seem to occur with periodic regularity in towns where such civic engagement is weak. He also draws attention to the important role played by local administration and the press. An alert administration and a responsible press can considerably contribute towards preventing the outbreak of communal riots. He makes a careful study of several pairs of towns with similar demographic profiles, for example, Aligarh and Calicut. While Aligarh is riot-prone, Calicut is virtually free from this virus. In his words, ‘The civic lives of the two cities are worlds apart.’ While in Aligarh the average Hindu and Muslim do not meet in economic, social and educational settings where mutual trust can be forged, in Calicut the two communities are inter-locked in associational and neighbourhood relationships.
Even if one has few quarrels with Varshney regarding his conclusions, it is difficult to avoid disappointment since he only describes the differences but stops short of explaining them. Why did similar associational forms of civic engagement not evolve in Aligarh? What were the historical reasons that stunted or prevented their growth? Hindus and Muslims do interact in the city in the sphere of business and economic activity but what stops them from interacting in social and cultural spheres as well remains unanswered.
Also, does a well-formed nationality identity too account for the difference between the two towns? As is well-known, Kerala Muslims do not look, or try to look, very different from Kerala Hindus or Christians. They also speak more or less the same language. In short, there is a well-evolved Malayalee identity which encompasses Malayalees of all religious or caste groupings. However, the same cannot be said of the Muslims in northern India. Does this constant awareness of difference not play a crucial role in the formation of communal consciousness of the Muslims as well as of the Hindus in northern Indian towns such as Aligarh? One is sure that academics of Varshney’s stature will come up with more satisfying answers to these diverse questions in their future work.
Teesta Setalvad’s detailed account of the post-Godhra riots captures the stark reality of how state-sponsored pogroms can take place in independent India. That it was a well-organised attack on the Muslim community with the complicity of the administration and police is well-known by now, yet the details continue to send a shiver down the spine.
This reviewer is not sure why social scientists favour terminological coyness and call propagandists of Hindu communalism ‘Hindu nationalists’. By the same logic, those who preach Muslim communalism should be called ‘Muslim nationalists’. For some reason the latter do not attract the attention of researchers in the same measure as do the former. That is why, if one takes a bird’s eye view of the ever-increasing literature on communal politics in India, one is struck by the dearth of good studies of Muslim communal organisations and how their activities impact on the Hindu psyche. Since communal riots take place only in those places where Muslims are present in sizeable numbers, it is necessary to examine the churning taking place among them. Just as the Hindu communal propaganda by the RSS, VHP, BJP, Bajrang Dal and other such organisations affects Muslims, similarly Muslim communal propaganda too casts its shadow over the Hindus. One may recall the strong reaction in the Hindu community a few years back when the president of the Students’ Islamic Movement of India (SIMI) had stated that converting India into an Islamic country was the goal of his organisation.
Finally, OUP should do something about its copy-editing, at least reduce the many typos. It does become difficult to follow the text if ‘he’ becomes ‘ha’, ‘it’ is spelt as ‘if’, and ‘purported’ is turned into ‘proported’.
Kuldeep Kumar
