Promotional Information

Exposes the mechanisms by which endemic communal violence is deliberately provoked and sustained

Table of Contents

Abbreviations Used in This Book

Maps, Figures, and Tables

Preface and Acknowledgments

Part I / Introduction

1. Explaining Communal Violence

Part II / Communal Riots in India and Aligarh

2. Aligarh: Politics, Population, and Social Organization

3. Hindu-Muslim Violence in India and Aligarh

4. The Great Aligarh Riots of December 1990 and January 1991

5. The Control of Communal Conflict in Aligarh

Part III / Demographic, Social, and Economic Factors in the Production of Riots

6. The Geography and Demography of Riots

7. The Economics of Riots: Economic Competition and Victimization

Part IV / Riots and the Political Process

8. Riots and Elections

9. The Practice of Communal Politics

10. Communalization and Polarization: Selected Constituency-Wise Results for Aligarh Elections

11. Communal Solidarity and Division at the Local Level

12. The Decline of Communal Violence and the Transformation of Electoral Competition

Part V / The Process of Blame Displacement

13. Riot Interpretation, Blame Displacement, and the Communal Discourse

14. Police Views of Hindu-Muslim Violence

15. The Role of the Media

Part IV / Conclusion

16. The Persistence of Hindu-Muslim Violence: The Dynamics of Riot Production

Postscript: Aligarh and Gujarat

Appendices

Notes

Index

Index of Mohallas

About the Author

Paul R. Brass is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Washington. He is the author of many books including Theft of an Idol and Riots and Pogroms.

Reviews

"Paul R. Brass is the most distinguished political scientist working on Indian politics today...[This is] an outstanding work that marks a radical new departure in the study of riots in India and, probably, much more broadly." -- Ethnic and Racial Studies "In this important book, Brass has collected a quite astounding amount of material on elections, caste politics, and the geography of riots and their morphology. The book contains a wealth of detailed observations about political parties, economic actors, and developments, as well as the geography of rioting, which makes it a landmark study of South Asian politics." -- Contemporary Sociology "This is a detailed and well-documented study... His down-to-earth and measured approach gets to the facts and reveals insights that are invariably glossed over in official reports... an important contribution to the subject."--Asian Affairs, November 2004