Description
Book SynopsisIn 2002, armed Hindu mobs attacked Muslims in broad daylight in the west Indian state of Gujarat. The pogrom, which was widely seen over television, left more than one thousand dead. In
Composing Violence Moyukh Chatterjee examines how highly visible political violence against minorities acts as a catalyst for radical changes in law, public culture, and power. He shows that, far from being quashed through its exposure by activists, media, and politicians, state-sanctioned anti-Muslim violence set the stage for transforming India into a Hindu supremacist state. The state''s and civil society’s responses to the violence, Chatterjee contends, reveal the constitutive features of modern democracy in which riots and pogroms are techniques to produce a form of society based on a killable minority and a triumphant majority. Focusing on courtroom procedures, police archives, legal activism, and mainstream media coverage, Chatterjee theorizes violence as a form of governance that cr
Trade Review"It is through scholarship of the kind offered by Composing Violence that we can grapple with questions of mass violence, impunity and justice after violence in South Asia, and beyond, in any meaningful way."
-- Chulani Kodikara * Social and Legal Studies *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments ix
Introduction. The Limits of Exposure 1
1. A Minor Reading 34
2. Composing the Archive 56
3. Against the Witness 76
4. Anti-Impunity Activism 93
5. Beyond the Unspeakable 107
Conclusion. Minor, Minorities, Minorization 127
Notes 139
Bibliography 151
Index 163
