Description
Book SynopsisRuchi Chaturvedi examines a decades-long conflict between Marxist and Hindu political parties in South India to illuminate how representative democracies can foster majoritarian violence.
Trade Review“
Violence of Democracy raises urgent, timely, and important questions about democracy, violence, and authoritarianism in postcolonial democracies. Ruchi Chaturvedi examines the nature of modern democracy through a dense, historically engaged, and ethnographically rich exploration of the political lives of young men in North Kerala.” -- Ritty A. Lukose, author of * Liberalization’s Children: Gender, Youth, and Consumer Citizenship in Globalizing India *
“Ruchi Chaturvedi’s
Violence of Democracy is a fascinating ethnography of party politics and violence in North Kerala that rethinks fundamental issues about democratic competition and mobilization. This original and insightful analysis of the nature and sources of political violence in modern democracies makes a pathbreaking contribution to the study of postcolonial societies.” -- Karuna Mantena, author of * Alibis of Empire: Henry Maine and the Ends of Liberal Imperialism *
Table of ContentsPreface ix
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction 1
I. Pastoral Power, Masculinity, and Interparty Conflict
1. Containment and Cretinism: The Early Democratic Decades 27
2. The CPI (M) and the Making of an Antagonistic Political Field 58
3. Care, Connectedness, and Violence in Hindu Right Communities 88
II. Judicial Responsibility and Subterfuge
4. Law’s Subterfuge: Affording Alibis and Bolstering Conflict 115
5. Individuating Responsibility: The Problem of Intention, Injustice, and Justice 145
Conclusion 167
Notes 173
Bibliiography 225
Index 245
