Description

"This work brings together essays on incidences of religious violence from the period of the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, down to the 2002 Gujarat pogrom. The individual chapters, written by leading experts and research students, provide important comparative studies into sectarian and communal violence in India and Pakistan. The political uses of violence and the role of the state in abetting or mitigating conflict are discussed in the case-study chapters which cover the regions of Punjab, UP, Gujarat, and Delhi at the time of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots. The studies provide a depth of historical and comparative interpretation which is lacking in many existing research works. Thus, the book makes important contributions towards both the provision of empirical data and the theory of the interconnection between religion, politics and violence on the subcontinent."--Jacket.