Violent Conjunctures in Democratic India

This book is a pioneering study of when and why Hindu Nationalists have engaged in discrimination and violence against minorities in contemporary India. Amrita Basu asks why the incidence and severity of violence differs significantly across Indian states, within states, and through time. Contrary to many predictions, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has neither consistently engaged in anti-minority violence nor been compelled by the centrifugal pressures of democracy to become a centrist party. Rather, the national BJP has alternated between moderation and militancy. Hindu nationalist violence has been conjunctural, determined by relations among its own party, social movement organization, and state governments, and on the character of opposition states, parties and movements. This study accords particular importance to the role of social movements in precipitating anti-minority violence. It calls for a broader understanding of social movements and a greater appreciation of their relationship to political parties.

Introduction; Part I. The Pillars of Hindu Nationalism: 1. The state: dialectics of states, parties, and movements; 2. Party politics: disrupting party-movement boundaries; 3. Movements politics: globalized markets and sacred spaces; Part II. Extensive Violence: 4. When local violence is not merely local: a tale of two towns; 5. Gujarat: the perfect storm; Part III. Episodic Violence: 6. Uttar Pradesh: movements and counter movements; 7. Himachal Pradesh: the party rules; 8. Rajasthan: two phases of party-movement relations; 9. Conclusion.

Amrita Basu is the author of Two Faces of Protest: Contrasting Modes of Women's Activism in India. She is the editor or co-editor of six books, including Women's Movements in a Global Era: The Power of Local Feminisms and Beyond Exceptionalism: Violence, Religion and Democracy in India. She has received research support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. She is a member of the Council of the American Political Science Association and Vice President of the American Institute of Indian Studies. She is on the editorial boards of the International Political Science Review, American Political Science Review, the International Feminist Journal of Politics, Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, and Critical Asian Studies. She was previously the South Asia editor for The Journal of Asian Studies.