Abstract

It is usually at least a simplification and, in most cases, a mistake to characterize conflicts that involve members of religious or ethnic communities or sects in violence against the other as “religious violence” or violence arising out of “ethnic hatreds.” These types of violence in which religion—or ethnicity or language or other forms of cultural markers—is/are involved are political first and religious/ethnic second, and occupy separate realms that may or may not be brought together in ways that can be specified. However, it is important to understand what are the purposes of this kind of short-hand labeling. Who benefits by such labeling and how? What then are the primary features of the riots, pogroms, massacres, and genocides that have become a hallmark of our times and what relationship do they bear to religious or ethnic groups, their beliefs and practices?

I offer a set of features of present-day riots, that I have generated from my own research in India, but which other scholars as well have found relevant to their research on violence that is related to religion or other cultural differences in other parts of the world. These include most especially the degree and form of organization of such violence; the intimate connection with questions of nationalism and national unity; the deliberate use of even the most extreme forms of violence, such as genocide, to achieve clear political goals; the close connection between violence and political mobilization and electoral competition; the complicity of the state and its agents, particularly the police; and the broader complicity of the press and even that of many academic analysts whose misguided methodologies lead them up numerous blind alleys. It is this complicity of so many that is masked by the shorthand definitions and explanations so often provided.