South Asian History and Culture 2010 - Vol. 1,4

Nalin Mehta; Mona G. Mehta:

Gujarat beyond Gandhi: notes on identity, conflict and society, 467-479
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507019

Nagindas Sanghavi:

From Navnirman to the anti-Mandal riots: the political trajectory of Gujarat (1974-1985), S. 480-493
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507021

Abstract: This essay examines the impact of the Navnirman mobilization of the 1970s and the anti-reservation Mandal agitations of the 1980s on Gujarat's essentially bi-polar political landscape. It shows how, despite being marked by violence and the dominance of upper-caste elites, the two movements differently influenced politics in the state and India more generally. The Navnirman movement fizzled away without any tangible strengthening of the opposition in Gujarat but paved the way for the imposition of national Emergency in 1975. The Congress's subsequent caste arithmetic and the KHAM policy alienated upper castes and ultimately provoked the anti-Mandal riots in 1985, which later turned anti-Muslim. The anti-reservation agitations coincided with the mobilization of Hindu right-wing forces and eventually helped consolidate the eventual political rise of the BJP in Gujarat.

Ornit Shani:

Bootlegging, politics and corruption: state violence and the routine practices of public power in Gujarat (1985-2002), S. 494-508
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507022

Abstract: This study explores the nature and practice of state power in ordinary times, as it developed in Gujarat from the 1980s, in an attempt to understand how the communal harnessing of the state that manifested in large parts of Gujarat in 2002 was possible. In particular, it examines everyday expressions of public corruption around the politics of bootlegging. In the context of systemic corruption at the local level in routine times there was little difference between violators of the law and its purported guardians, such as state law-enforcement mechanisms and politicians. From the 1980s, practices of public power in Ahmedabad, infused by routine forms of corruption, became entwined with deepening ethno-Hindu politics and a strong anti-Muslim bent, thus readily enabling the communal harnessing of state power in 2002.

Mona G. Mehta:

A river of no dissent: Narmada Movement and coercive Gujarati nativism, S. 509-528
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507023

Abstract: This article examines the Narmada Movement in Gujarat to illuminate the enduring modes of politics and collective identifications it engendered in the state. It shows how the movement engaged the instruments of democracy to forge a popular consensus around a coercive Gujarati nativism that became the touchstone of political action and helped consolidate a politics of Hindutva at the turn of the twenty-first century. It concludes by reflecting on the conundrum of democracy in Gujarat posed by this coercive nativism, namely, democracy's complicity in and vulnerability to popular support for exclusionary politics. This analysis elucidates the regional particularities of politics in Gujarat while also revealing the contradictory relationship among democracy, participatory social movements and exclusionary politics more generally.

Arvind Rajagopal:

Special political zone: urban planning, spatial segregation and the infrastructure of violence in Ahmedabad, S. 529-556
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507024

Abstract: The violence in Gujarat in 2002 presented a paradoxical phenomenon, namely, a spectacle of violence ostensibly enacted by non-state forces that was covertly and overtly sanctioned by the state. Violence was both spatially localized and physically concentrated on Muslims. Apologists invoked a history of communal conflict and specifically of Muslim provocation, explaining the pogrom of 2002 as having ample precedent and justifiable cause. This paper addresses Ahmedabad's urbanity as an enabling locus for such violence, and draws on historical and ethnographic research to argue that spatial and perceptual practices in the city have combined to ghettoize Muslims, and produce forms of knowledge complicit with structural and episodic violence against them. Such practices (and their discursive uptake) are enabled by political conjunctures that give structurally embedded processes form and visibility. This paper explores the issue of political violence and Muslim vulnerability in Gujarat under the explanatory rubric of the 'Special Political Zone,' an informal analogue to a Special Economic Zone (SEZ), the latter being a site exempt from prevailing regulations, purportedly to enhance economic growth. The political ability to endow specific sites with exceptional legal status for economic outcomes implies the 'Special Political Zone,' a site where select laws of the land are voided to ensure specific political outcomes, for example the staging of violence to dramatize the restructuring of the relationship between majority and minority. This paper offers a limited examination of this hypothesis taking Ahmedabad as a privileged site where much of the violence in Gujarat in 2002 was concentrated.

Parvis Ghassem-Fachandi:

On the political use of disgust in Gujarat, S. 557-576
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507025

Abstract: In the context of mobilization for Hindu nationalism, processes of stereotyping a familiar other, the neighbourhood Muslim, play a significant role in fomenting experiences that confirm stigmatizations. These experiences concern the figure of the Muslim that arouses a phantasmagoria of fear, disgust and anger. Fear surrounds the 'Muslim' as she invokes the possibility of terrorism and calls for heightened security measures. Disgust is the register of a radical identification with a new form of hyperbolic vegetarianism. Anger, however, is what allegedly fuels the violence of the masses. This article investigates enunciations and representations that relate directly to consumption and production of meat in concrete quotidian practices: vegetarianism and rejection of animal sacrifice. It argues that the affect of disgust for meat has become an important cultural relay in the vegetarian politics of the state. By insisting on an identity formulated in the language of non-violence, it simultaneously renders permissive identification with violence.

Nalin Mehta:

Ashis Nandy vs. the state of Gujarat: authoritarian developmentalism, democracy and the politics of Narendra Modi, S. 577-596
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507028

Abstract: This article aims to unravel the rise of Gujarat's current Chief Minister Narendra Modi and his brand of personality politics that has dominated Gujarati politics in the past decade. It uses the legal battle between the eminent sociologist Ashis Nandy and the Government of Gujarat, that unfolded in 2008, as a case study to illustrate the dominant impulses of what has been termed 'Moditva' or the Modi model and its implications. The state-sanctioned prosecution of Ashis Nandy over a newspaper article that criticized the Gujarati middle classes was ultimately struck down by the Supreme Court of India but the legal battle, and the public discourse around it, serves as a useful prism to understand the deeper processes at work within Moditva and the particular brand of authoritarian developmentalism it offers, with little scope for dissent. The legal battle erupted just a few months before a galaxy of India's top industrialists publicly backed Modi as a future prime minister, hailing his excellent developmental record post-2002 and the creation of an investment-friendly climate in Gujarat. At one level, the Nandy case can be read as a straight narrative of an iconic battle for freedom of speech, one in which Gujarat and its politics were once again at the centre of the debate. But the debate about Moditva is also a metaphor for alternative visions for India. Its future trajectory will be decisive not only for the future of Gujarat but equally for the future of the BJP and for the idea of India itself.

Anindita Chakrabarti:

Soteriological journeys and discourses of self-transformation: the Tablighi Jamaat and Svadhyaya in Gujarat, S. 597-614
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507029

Abstract: This chapter explores the dynamics of the local/global networks in two religious movements - Svadhyaya and Tablighi Jamaat - using ethnographic accounts from Gujarat. The movements' theology of reform is based on the claim that to change one's moral and spiritual status one needs to change the world around and vice versa. The volunteers periodically embark on self-transformative religious journeys to approach their co-religionists with their message. The chapter dwells on how the soteriological questions are posed in the movements and the method of religious journeying that acts as a double-edged process of self-transformation and organizational expansion. Locating the movements within the discursive field of secularism in the Indian context, I will problematize the concept of 'apolitical' movements, arguing that whether a movement is political or apolitical is not necessarily a question of choice that religious groups make but they acquire political significance under certain circumstances. The ethnography of the movements in Gujarat spanning almost a decade (2000--2009) will help us to appreciate the internal theological questions that lead to the formation of new religious communities, religious networks and the relation of these movements with the wider political context.

Goolam Vahed:

An 'Imagined Community' in diaspora: Gujaratis in South Africa, S. 615-629
DOI: 10.1080/19472498.2010.507030

Abstract: Increasing attention is being paid to the heterogeneous identity of Indian South Africans. This article contributes to this literature by highlighting the distinct migratory history of Gujarati South Africans and the importance these histories have in perceptions of community identity. It traces key features of the early Gujarati migratory process, the ways in which Gujarati identities have been reconfigured over the past century, the relationship between Gujarati Hindus and Muslims, Gujarati mobility, how Gujaratis fit into the broader Indian population and how Gujarat is imagined within the diaspora in the contemporary moment.