Leveling Crowds: Ethnonationalist Conflicts and Collective Violence in South Asia"In recent years much has been written about what Tambiah calls 'the strange malformations' that have resulted at the end of the twentieth century from complex combinations of nationalism, ethnicity, demands for self-determination, and social groups defining each other in terms of religious identity. No one, however, has analyzed how these factors lead to the violence that has become the characteristic of our time as brilliantly as Tambiah has in this remarkable book. His insights as a social science into the political and cultural history of South Asia are informed by a passionate humanism that gives us a new understanding of the dark tragedies of our time."—Ainslie Embree, Professor Emeritus of History, Columbia University "Resolutely transgressing disciplinary and spatial boundaries, Tambiah offers a scholarly but accessible, a focused but wide-ranging analysis that places ethnicity on the borderlines of the old and the new, the past and the present, politics and culture...With uncanny skill, he turns the contemporary worry about ethnic politics and violence into a brilliant meditation on the history of nationalism, nation-states, and world-capitalism—in a word, modernity itself. No student of modernity, let alone ethnicity in South Asia and other regions, can afford to ignore this thoughtful inquiry into our modern history."—Gyan Prakash, Princeton University |
Contents
The Wider Context | 3 |
Orientation and Objectives | 20 |
The 1915 Sinhala BuddhistMuslim Riots | 36 |
Two Postindependence Ethnic Riots in Sri Lanka | 82 |
Sikh Identity Separation and Ethnic Conflict | 101 |
Ethnic Conflict in Pakistan | 163 |
Some General Features of Ethnic Riots | 213 |
The Routinization and Ritualization of Violence | 221 |
Hindu Nationalism the Ayodhya Campaign | 244 |
Reconfiguring Le Bon and Durkheim | 297 |
Notes | 343 |
| 375 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action acts alleged areas armed army attack authorities Bangladesh become British Buddhist called caste cause central century Ceylon civil claims collective collective violence Colombo colonial Congress crowds cultural death Delhi destruction directed economic elections especially ethnic ethnic conflict example fire forces groups Hindu houses human Ibid identity India interests Islamic issue Karachi Khalsa killed language leaders leveling living looting majority March mass militant minister minority mobilized Moors move movement Muhajirs Muslim nationalist occurred officials organized Pakistan participants parties percent persons police political population practices Press processes protest provinces Punjab relation religion religious reported riots rituals rule rumors Sikh Sindhi Sinhalese social society South Sri Lanka Studies taken Tamil temple tion took traditional University urban victims violence Western workers