Description
Book SynopsisDoes religion cause violent conflict, asks Chad M. Bauman, and if so, does it cause conflict more than other social identities? Through an extended history of Christian-Hindu relations, with particular attention to the 20072008 riots in Kandhamal, Odisha, Anti-Christian Violence in India examines religious violence and how it pertains to broader aspects of humanity. Is religious conflict sui generis, or is it merely one species of intergroup conflict? Why and how might violence become an attractive option for religious actors? What explains the increase in religious violence over the last twenty to thirty years?
Integrating theories of anti-Christian violence focused on politics, economics, and proselytization, Anti-Christian Violence in India additionally weaves in recent theory about globalization and, in particular, the forms of resistance against Western secular modernity that globalization periodically helps to provoke. With such theories in mind, Bauman exp
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Bauman enters deeply into the thinking of Hindu nationalists to show that their acts of violence against Christians are motivated not by disputes over doctrine but by an even more basic clash over the role of religion.
* Foreign Affairs *
Table of ContentsIntroduction: Anti-Christian Violence in Global Context
1. A Socio-cosmological Approach to Anti-Christian Violence
2. A Prehistory of Hindu-Christian Conflict
3. "Everyday" Anti-Christian Violence
4. "Darkness, Loneliness, Loud Noises, and Men": The Riots of Kandhamal, Odisha, 2007–2008
5. The Social Construction of Kandhamal's Violence
Conclusion: A Geography of Anger
