Synopses & Reviews
Synopsis
This timely book, updated for the paperback edition, examines how civic ties between Hindus and Muslims in different Indian cities serve to contain, or even prevent, ethnic violence. It is of interest not only to South Asian scholars and policymakers but also to those studying multiethnic societies in other areas of the world.
"An outstanding work of social science, one of the most important studies of ethnic violence to appear in many years."--Samuel P. Huntington, author of The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
"An important breakthrough in understanding the problem of ethnic conflict globally."--Robert Putnam, author of Bowling Alone, as quoted in the New York Times
"A lasting contribution to our understanding of how to tackle the roots of communal violence in India."--Radha Kumar, Foreign Affairs
"Scholars have hailed Varshney's] book as a major breakthrough, while the United Nations has already adopted his method to study Muslim-Christian violence in Indonesia."--New York Times
"A timely, groundbreaking study."--Kenneth J. Cooper, Boston Globe
Impressive. . . . Varshney's findings are intuitively satisfying and also useful. It was a pleasure to discover work so uniformingly rigorous and admirable in its theory, methodology, empiricism, and ethnicality.--Rick A. Eden, The Key Reporter
Synopsis
What kinds of civic ties between different ethnic communities can contain, or even prevent, ethnic violence? This book draws on new research on Hindu-Muslim conflict in India to address this important question. Ashutosh Varshney examines three pairs of Indian cities--one city in each pair with a history of communal violence, the other with a history of relative communal harmony--to discern why violence between Hindus and Muslims occurs in some situations but not others. His findings will be of strong interest to scholars, politicians, and policymakers of South Asia, but the implications of his study have theoretical and practical relevance for a broad range of multiethnic societies in other areas of the world as well.
The book focuses on the networks of civic engagement that bring Hindu and Muslim urban communities together. Strong associational forms of civic engagement, such as integrated business organizations, trade unions, political parties, and professional associations, are able to control outbreaks of ethnic violence, Varshney shows. Vigorous and communally integrated associational life can serve as an agent of peace by restraining those, including powerful politicians, who would polarize Hindus and Muslims along communal lines.
Table of Contents
pt. 1. Arguments and theories. Introduction -- Why civil society? Ethnic conflict and the existing traditions of inquiry -- pt. 2. The national level. Competing national imaginations -- Hindu-Muslim riots, 1950-1995: the national picture -- pt. 3. Local variations: Aligarh and Calicut: internal and external cleavages. Aligarh and Calicut: civic life and its political foundations -- Vicious and virtuous circles -- pt. 3. Local variations: Hyderabad and Lucknow: elite integration versus mass integration. Princely resistance to civil society -- Hindu nationalists as bridge builders? -- pt. 3. Local variations: Ahmedabad and Surat: how civic institutions decline. Gandhi and civil society -- Decline of a civic order and communal violence -- Endogeneity? Of causes and consequences -- pt. 4. Conclusions. Ethnic conflict, the state, and civil society.