Tuesday, May 8, 2007
Room JB 1- 075 Time: 12:30 -- 2:00 pm


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Speaker: Ashutosh Varshney is Professor of Political Science and Director, Center for South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research and teaching cover three areas: Ethnicity and Nationalism; Political Economy of Development; and South Asian Politics and Political Economy. He is currently work on a project on cities and ethnic conflict, drawing his materials from several countries and on the politics of state-level economic reforms in India. His most recent publication is Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India (2002). His other books are: Democracy, Development and the Countryside: Urban-Rural Struggles in India (1995); India in the Era of Economic Reforms (1999) co-edited with Jeffrey Sachs; and Beyond Urban Bias (1993).

Discussant: Ian Bannon is the Manager of the Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction Unit in the Social Development Department. He is an economist by training and has had an extensive career having worked in South Asia, Africa and Latin America. He was actively involved in post-conflict reconstruction and supporting the PRSP processes in Nicaragua and Honduras.

Description:
In India, as elsewhere in the developing world, a great deal is always said about how the state is involved, or implicated in, communal riots, as was true during the 2002 violence in the state of Gujarat. However, despite a plethora of literature, we still do not have a good theory of the relationship between the state and communal violence.

A good theory must specify (a) the conditions under which the state develops an interest in touching off, or worsening, communal riots, instead of preventing or containing them; and (b) it must also clarify whether the state always has the ability to prevent or contain riots, even if it has an interest in doing so. In short, the key question for theory is: What makes the state willing and/or able to enact its constitutionally assigned riot-preventing, or riot-containing, role?

In response, while Professor Varshney does not develop a full-blown theory in this paper, he takes some steps towards it. Drawing on his work in India and his more recent work in Indonesia and Malaysia, he develops some building blocks of a possible theory, and some classification schemes for the types of state involvement in communal tensions. He does so indirectly: by focusing on intercommunal civic ties, and asking what builds or undermines them. The role of the state emerges in the process of understanding, and answering, that question. Three uses of state power are identified: as a source of organized violence; as a source of entrapment; and as a source of regeneration.

Download Paper:
Sparks and Fires: Reassessing the Role of the State in Communal Riots

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