Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, HistoriesMuch has been written about the "extraordinary" violence of recent history, its brutality, and the impossibility of describing it. Routine Violence focuses on the violence of much more routine political practices--the drawing up of political categories and the writing of national histories. The book takes its material from the history of twentieth-century India: the land of Gandhi and of effective nonviolent resistance to British colonial rule. It asks questions about how particular histories are claimed as the "real" histories of a nation; how the "sacred" nation, and its ("mainstream") culture and politics, come to be constructed; and how a certain inducement to violence, and a collective amnesia regarding that violence, follow from all of this. This is the first book to engage in a sustained investigation of the routine political violence of our times. No sales in India, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and Pakistan. |
Contents
Introduction Negotiating the Boundaries of Political Violence | 1 |
In Defense of the Fragment | 16 |
Reply to a RightWing Journalist | 45 |
The Nation and Its Past | 50 |
Monumental History | 68 |
Ayodhya and the State | 93 |
The Question of Belonging | 103 |
Marked and Unmarked Citizens | 129 |
Cognizing Community | 154 |
The Secular State? | 172 |
Notes | 193 |
| 217 | |
| 221 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Ambedkar argument asked attacks Ayodhya Babari Masjid Bhagalpur Bharat Brahmanical British Buddhists called caste century Chamars chapter Christians citizens claim classes colonial construction context conversion culture Dalit debate Delhi destruction dialogue discourse economic example fragment Gandhi Golwalkar groups Guha Gujarat Hindi Hindu history Hindu nation Hinduism Hindus and Muslims Hindustan Hindutva historians historiography history of Ayodhya Ibid Indian history Indian Muslims Indian nationalism Islam Jacques Derrida kind Krishna land large numbers leaders liberal live mainstream majority minority modern mosque movement Muslim League nation-state nationalist natural nineteenth organizations Pakistan Pandey Partition and Independence political postcolonial PUDR question Ranajit Guha recent religion religious right-wing Hindu riots Saketa Savarkar sectarian secular Shri Ram Janmabhumi Sikh Skandagupta social society strife struggle Subaltern Subaltern Studies suggest Talal Asad temple tion tolerance traditions unity untouchables upper-caste V.D. Savarkar violence Vishwa Hindu Parishad women writing