Communal Violence and the Social Order in Hyderabad (India)
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Looking Through and Beyond Conflicts: Communal Violence and the Social Order in Hyderabad (India) Emanuela Mangiarotti University of Genoa, Department of Science Education, Genoa [email protected] Vol. 13/2019 The IJCV provides a forum for scientific exchange and public dissemination of up-to-date scien- tific knowledge on conflict and violence. The IJCV is independent, peer reviewed, open access, and included in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) as well as other rele- vant databases (e.g., SCOPUS, EBSCO, ProQuest, DNB). The topics on which we concentrate—conflict and violence—have always been central to various disciplines. Consequently, the journal encompasses contributions from a wide range of disciplines, including criminology, economics, education, ethnology, his- tory, political science, psychology, social anthropology, sociology, the study of reli- gions, and urban studies. All articles are gathered in yearly volumes, identified by a DOI with article-wise pagi- nation. For more information please visit www.ijcv.org Suggested Citation: APA: Mangiarotti, E. (2019). Looking Through and Beyond Conflicts: Communal Vio- lence and the Social Order in Hyderabad (India). International Journal of Conflict and Violence, 13, 1-10. doi: 10.4119/UNIBI/ijcv.658 Harvard: Mangiarotti, Emanuela. 2019. Looking Through and Beyond Conflicts: Com- munal Violence and the Social Order in Hyderabad (India). International Journal of Conflict and Violence 13: 1-10. doi: 10.4119/UNIBI/ijcv.658 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution—NoDerivatives License. ISSN: 1864–1385 IJCV: Vol. 13/2019 Mangiarottii: Looking Through and Beyond Conflicts: Communal Violence and the Social Order in Hyderabad 1 (India) Looking Through and Beyond Conflicts: Communal Violence and the Social Order in Hyderabad (India) Emanuela Mangiarotti University of Genoa, Department of Science Education, Genoa Communalism permeates the political, academic, media and everyday discourse in and about India. As a domin - ant interpretive framework, it expresses a particular politics of interfaith relations that normalises socio-political conflicts and violence intersecting with gender, class and caste relations. These intersections emerge in the ex- periences, practices and spaces of marginality and violence, revealing both the mechanisms of their normalisa- tion in the context of communal violence and the experience of living within, through and despite it. Everyday life becomes the privileged context for reading communalism in light of a systematic reorganising of the gender- socio-economic governance, and the possibility to interrogate it. Based on an ethnographic study carried out in Hyderabad between 2009 and 2012, the paper reveals a politics of communal violence embedded in everyday so - cial practices. It shows that the gender-socio-economic governance is not parallel to communalism but in fact constitutive of its logic and practices. The paper offers a perspective on how socio-political conflicts become ac- tualised in a social order and how agency within such contexts unfolds as awareness of and action upon the space/possibility of their reconfiguration. Keywords: communalism, communal violence, caste, gender, socio-economic order, intersectionality 1 Introduction sions of power in the social space of interfaith rela- Communalism permeates the political, academic, me- tions and overlooks some fundamental historical and dia and everyday discourse in and about India. Any sociological issues at the heart of Indian politics and effort to comprehend past and present discussions on society (Aloysius 1998; Gottschalk and Doniger 2000; modern and contemporary India will have to account Pandey 2006; Shani 2007). In that sense, communal- for communalism as a dominant interpretive frame- ism expresses a particular politics and practice of in- work of interfaith relations and the ways analysts, terfaith relations. commentators and ordinary people use it to make In particular, the paper shows that gender and so- sense of the tensions inherent in India’s national cio-economic power differentials do not unfold paral- project(s). lel to communalism but are, in fact, constitutive of Broadly speaking, communalism has two, closely in- communal material-discursive practices.2 To do so, it terrelated meanings: it designates conflicts between delves into the mechanisms whereby communal vio- religious communities and qualifies politics and lence unfolds at the intersection of gender, class and groups as sectarian.1 Building on the literature, this caste relations, between and across religious commu- paper starts from the observation that the communal nity boundaries. It then discusses how communalism lens renders invisible the workings of multiple dimen- 2 According to Barad (2003, 822), “the relationship between the material and the discursive is one of mutual entailment. 1 Communalism is not exclusively associated with Hindus Neither is articulated/articulable in the absence of the other; and Muslims, but with “religious communities” in general. mattier and meaning are mutually articulated. Neither dis- Here I analyze its implications for Hindu-Muslim relations. cursive practices nor material phenomena are ontologically For a historical analysis of the connotations attiributed to or epistemologically prior. Neither can be explained in terms the “communal” see (Aloysius 1998; Jalal 1996, 1997; Mah- of the other. Neither has privileged status in determining mood 1993; Pandey 2006). the other.” IJCV: Vol. 13/2019 Mangiarottii: Looking Through and Beyond Conflicts: Communal Violence and the Social Order in Hyderabad 2 (India) silences specific subject positions and the possibility changed in connection with the growing visibility of of alternative practices of interfaith relations, espe- Hindutva organisations in the socio-political arena.4 As cially in situations of crisis, when tensions over rela- the idols increasingly embody aggressive masculine tions of power unsettle an otherwise normalised social models, they come to actualise the intersecting gen- hierarchy. der-based and socio-economic regulating principles of This paper is part of a larger study based on a four- communalism. This section relies mostly on the analy- year-research in India, which addresses the question sis of photos taken during the annual Ganesh of how communalism affects existing analytical and Chaturthi.5 socio-political perspectives and their capacity to em- brace possibilities of social change. It interrogates 1.1 The Multiple Intersecting Dimensions of how a politics of communal violence becomes embed- Communal Violence ded in social practices, normalising violence against The connection between communalism and caste/ certain subjects and the relations of power acted out class dynamics has been explored in a number of within, between and across the boundaries of reli- studies in Indian historical sociology (Aloysius 2010; gious communities. In that sense, the paper also pro- Roy 2018; Shani 2007; Teltumbde 2005). This literature poses a perspective on how socio-political conflicts shows how the reproduction of a Brahminical social become actualised in a social order and how agency order relies on the erasure of socio-economic stratifi- within such contexts unfolds as awareness of and ac- cation as a focal point for political action and on the tion upon the space/possibility of their reconfigura- mobilisation of the lower castes and classes in the tion. context of communal conflicts. In that respect, Ilaiah’s All ethnographic research materials referred to in analysis of Hindutva is powerful exposé of how caste the paper – which include semi-structured interviews, factors into India’s communal politics: group conversations, photography and participant ob- Suddenly since about 1990 the word “Hindutva” has be- servation – were collected in so-called “riot-prone” gun to echo in our ears, day in and day out, as if every- one in India who is not a Muslim, a Christian or a Sikh and “communally-sensitive” areas of Hyderabad’s Old is a Hindu. I am being told that I am a Hindu. I am also City. Besides their association with communal vio- told that my parents, relatives and the caste in which lence, these urban zones are also economically and so- we were born and brought up are Hindu (Ilaiah 1996, xi). cially marginalised, largely inhabited by low-class Adding to Ilaiah’s perspective, Tharu and Niranjana Muslims and low-caste Hindus, some of them mi- discuss how both gender and caste function as organ- grants from other Indian regions.3 These demographic ising principles of the Indian nation-scape: characterisations are far from sociologically static, the shaping of the normative human-Indian subject in- volved […] its coding as upper-caste, middle-class, and are of great relevance in terms of how specific Hindu and male. The coding was effected by processes gender and socio-economic relations sustain or sub- of othering/differentiation such as, for example, the vert the logic of a communal order. definition of upper-caste/class female respectability in counterpoint to lower-caste licentiousness, or Hindu tol- Drawing on selected interviews with residents of the erance to Muslim fanaticism as well as by a gradual and Old City, the first section discusses the entanglements sustained transformation of the institutions that govern everyday life (Tharu and Niranjana 1994, 96). of communal violence and everyday gender and socio- economic relations. The second section discusses the relevance