Understanding Violence

Divided into nine chapters, Violent Conjunctures in Democratic India is an extended analysis of the relation between the Indian state and party politics as it comes to inflect, influence and author communal violence. This relationship is charted through a series of five case studies that detail Hindu–Muslim violence as well as provide correctives to our understanding of the analytic and normative purchase of what is commonly called communal riot.

The marshalling of evidence is from various sources: statistical figures that show the incidents of violence, tables detailing the spread of violence precipitated by political parties, state legislative assembly debates, and reports that table its effects, as well as narrative accounts produced by other scholars. The result is an impressive achievement, particularly in its ability to weave together party organisation and social movements in the career of Hindu–Muslim violence in India.