Aftermath of a Riot Foretold: Violence, Impunity and Sovereignty in Gujarat, India
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Distribution Agreement In presenting this thesis or dissertation as a partial fulfillment of the requirements for an advanced degree from Emory University, I hereby grant to Emory University and its agents the non- exclusive license to archive, make accessible, and display my thesis or dissertation in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known, including display on the world wide web. I understand that I may select some access restrictions as part of the online submission of this thesis or dissertation. I retain all ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. Signature: _____________________________ ______________ Moyukh Chatterjee Date Aftermath of a Riot Foretold: Violence, Impunity and Sovereignty in Gujarat, India By Moyukh Chatterjee Advisor: Bruce Knauft, Ph.D. An abstract of A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology 2015 Aftermath of a Riot Foretold: Violence, Impunity and Sovereignty in Gujarat, India By Moyukh Chatterjee Doctor of Philosophy Anthropology _________________________________________ Bruce Knauft, Ph.D. Advisor _________________________________________ David Nugent, Ph.D. Committee Member _________________________________________ Gyanendra Pandey, Ph.D. Committee Member Accepted: _________________________________________ Lisa A. Tedesco, Ph.D. Dean of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies ___________________ Date Abstract Aftermath of a Riot Foretold: Violence, Impunity and Sovereignty in Gujarat, India By Moyukh Chatterjee This dissertation examines sociolegal processes that allow Hindu nationalists and state officials to perform mass, public, anti-minority violence in Gujarat in ways that expand and deepen their power. I argue impunity is not merely the breakdown of law and order but a systematic and ongoing process of legitimizing and performing Hindu sovereignty in India. Based on ethnographic and archival research conducted over eighteen months in Gujarat, I describe long- term official and unofficial practices by which political violence against Muslims is denied and authorized within a liberal secular state. This research delineates legal trials that declare victims’ testimony inconsistent and exaggerated, police documents that transform anti-minority violence into a generic ‘riot,’ and a legal apparatus that renders mass violence often unaccountable. Through an investigation of legal technologies, state writing practices, and everyday techniques of Hindu nationalist activists in Ahmedabad, I uncover the legal and political infrastructure of impunity that outlives recurring episodes of anti-minority violence in contemporary India. I take as my ethnographic entry point one of India’s most gruesome episodes of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat, a Western state in India, often called the “laboratory of Hindutva” or militant Hindu nationalism. The perpetrators, armed groups of Hindu nationalists with the support of the local police, politicians, and government attacked and killed Muslims in 2002. The attacks were justified as ‘reaction’ to the deaths of 59 Hindu activists killed by a Muslim mob in Godhra. Subsequently, the police told Muslims “we have no orders to save you.” About 1000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed in the attacks. Around 150,000 were displaced and forced to take shelter in relief camps. In 2014, Narendra Modi, who was the Chief Minister of Gujarat during the attacks against Muslims and widely criticized for allowing the violence, won a historic mandate in the national elections to become the Prime Minister of India. Scholars, civil society, and activists often describe the recurrent exoneration of perpetrators of public violence against minorities as the failure of the rule of law. I suggest that legal frameworks of modern states sometimes function very effectively to confer impunity on perpetrators of state- abetted violence. I demonstrate that these state practices of exonerating violence are better understood as a technique of governance – a form of state authority based on the ability of those in power to control, subdue, and punish minorities within postcolonial states. Traditionally, legal processes and law-enforcement agencies are expected to address and rectify such wrongs. In contemporary India, however, legal practices frequently impede accountability after everyday and extraordinary violence against minorities. This generates an urgent problem in Indian society: Why is political violence against minorities most often legally unaccountable? In 2010-13, I spent eighteen months attending criminal trials, interviewing survivors, paralegals, NGO workers, Hindu nationalist activists, and analyzing police and legal documents in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. My fieldwork included both Muslim and Hindu communities, activists, courts and NGOs. By embedding modes of unaccountability in the heart of everyday legal and state practices, I show why ‘spectacular violence’ does not disturb everyday politics, but is an important force to claim public legitimacy and strengthen state power. Aftermath of a Riot Foretold: Violence, Impunity and Sovereignty in Gujarat, India By Moyukh Chatterjee Advisor: Bruce Knauft, Ph.D. A dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the James T. Laney School of Graduate Studies of Emory University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Anthropology 2015 Acknowledgements In May 2002, I boarded the Ahmedabad bound Ashram Express on a hot afternoon at the bustling Old Delhi Railway station in Delhi. I reached Ahmedabad early next morning, but I had no idea then that my journey would end in May 2015. Like the rest of what follows, I have drafted this acknowledgment many times in my head, and this is my last draft. I did not make sense of what I have written here alone. In the last thirteen years, my friends and family have happily shared the burden of a project that had its own life. I have opened the folder “Thesis Drafts” in Bangalore, Delhi, Atlanta, Bombay, Dubai, and Ahmedabad, surrounded by new faces, friends, scenes, and sounds. A few people have supported my dissertation no matter where I found myself. Since 2007, my advisor Bruce Knauft has guided this dissertation with his characteristic generosity, warmth, and joie de vivre. Given me freedom to experiment with theoretical models, field sites, methods, classes and writing strategies, and make my own path. His support is not limited to this dissertation, but informs my experience of graduate study in Emory. My advisors Gyan Pandey and David Nugent are the other two pillars that supported this dissertation, especially when writing or rather rewriting seemed impossible. While my peers made writing groups with graduate students, I inflicted multiple drafts on my committee, and they read each draft with equal enthusiasm. Gyan’s graceful writing remains an unachieved ideal, but has guided my attempts to write more elegantly. Since my M. Phil. days in Delhi School of Economics, I have been inspired by Gyan’s work on violence and history. I am very grateful that he allowed me to become an honorary member of Emory’s History department, South Asia Research Group, and the Postcolonial Studies Workshops and Conferences, which gave me numerous opportunities to meet and learn from an interdisciplinary group of scholars. David Nugent’s door is always open to students, especially after 6 pm on Friday. Prof. Nugent’s frank comments and critique often forced me to undo what I had done over several months, but that has helped me remain faithful to my fieldwork. Post three hour-long marathon discussions with Prof. Nugent, I saw my project in a new light, outside the clichés that I imposed on it. During one of many crises that marked my experience of graduate school, he said, “One day we’ll make an anthropologist out of you.” I hope he succeeded. Ram Narayan Kumar, human rights activist and researcher, taught me that the best work in the aftermath of violence begins with listening to the survivor. My stay in Gujarat, since 2002, was possible because of the generosity and warmth of the staff and director of the Behavioral Science Center at St. Xavier’s College, Ahmedabad. I took refuge in their library on days when fieldwork seemed impossible; hiding under the tall shady trees of the hostel, watching evening football and basketball matches, and soaking in the tranquility of Sunday mass in the parish, are some of my fondest memories of Ahmedabad. I thank Mr. Jayantibhai and his wife, who made learning Gujarati a joy. I would like to thank the Wenner-Gren Foundation for supporting my main doctoral fieldwork between 2010 and 2013. In Gujarat, Ishaaqbhai, Johanna, Prita Jha, Mustaqbhai, Usmanbhai, Bhanubhai, Muzaffarbhai, Umarbhai, Khaleda Apa, Jayantibhai, Jaswantbhai, Nazirbhai, Afroz Apa, Shenaz Apa, Yasinbhai, Farzana Apa, Gopalbhai and Irfanbhai answered my questions and allowed me to learn from them. Harsh Mander’s warmth and generosity helped me meet lawyers, survivors, and activists in Gujarat and beyond. His personal relationship with survivors of the Gujarat pogrom is a model of activism and research in the aftermath. Kishorebhai, at great personal and professional risk, helped me negotiate the minefield of egos and agendas that characterize fieldwork