The Political Logic of Ethnic Violence

• Author: Michael Biggs,Raheel Dhattiwala
• Published date: 01 December 2012
• Date: 01 December 2012
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0032329212461125
• Subject Matter: Articles

Politics & Society

40(4) 483 –516

© 2012 SAGE Publications

Reprints and permission:

sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav

DOI: 10.1177/0032329212461125

http://pas.sagepub.com

461125PAS40410.1177/00323292124611

25Politics & SocietyDhattiwala and Biggs

1University of Oxford, UK

Corresponding Author:

Raheel Dhattiwala, Department of Sociology, University of Oxford, Manor Road, Oxford OX1 3UQ, UK

Email: raheel.dhattiwala@gmail.com

The Political Logic of Ethnic

Violence: The Anti-Muslim

Pogrom in Gujarat, 2002

Raheel Dhattiwala1 and Michael Biggs1

Abstract

Ethnic violence in Gujarat in 2002 killed at least a thousand Muslims. Compiling data

from the Times of India, we investigate variation across 216 towns and rural areas.

Analysis reveals the political logic of violence. Killing was less likely where the Hindu

nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was weakest, but was even less likely where

the BJP was strong; it was most likely where the party faced the greatest electoral

competition. Underemployment and Muslim in-migration also increased violence.

The political logic is confirmed by analysis of the subsequent election: the BJP’s vote

increased most in districts with the worst violence. Police chiefs in districts where

violence was severe were more likely to be promoted.

Keywords

ethnic conflict, violence, Hindu-Muslim, Gujarat, India

484 Politics & Society 40(4)

The Partition violence between Hindus and Muslims, which claimed 200,000 lives,

marked the beginning of what was to become a pervasive phenomenon in independent

India. Since 1950, Hindu-Muslim violence has claimed more than 10,000 lives.1 A

systematic causal analysis of these events becomes a challenge in the absence of reli-

able data, assuming that government data tends to be biased.2 That could be one reason

why much of the study of ethnic violence in India has followed two approaches: First,

the culturalist approach construes the context of violence rather than the cause. Cultur-

alists focus on a “post-riot” narrative to identify the processes that generated the riot

and its interpretations (and their manipulation) after it has occurred.3 The second

approach identifies causation qualitatively, through anecdotal evidence, historical nar-

ratives, and field reports of human rights groups.4 Both approaches converge on two

conclusions: that the typical ethnic riot is (i) a multicausal phenomenon emerging

from a context of social tensions that are strengthened by historical distortions and

myths, and (ii) often a state-sponsored “pogrom” against ethnic minorities for elec-

toral benefits.5 Establishing causation is problematic because qualitative evidence

does not control for other socioeconomic factors and, more significantly, these studies

focus only on places where riots have occurred, generating a selection bias and the

danger of theoretical overgeneralization.6 Among these contributions, Brass uses the

post-riot interpretation approach to understand spatial variations, suggesting the pres-

ence or absence of “institutionalized riot systems” as the principal factor in predicting

occurrence of riots over time and space.7 However, this explanation cannot control for

other socioeconomic factors, even as it attempts to decipher the cause of violence from

its consequences.

Recent studies have attempted to overcome previous limitations. Key proponents

include Varshney and Wilkinson, who pioneered a dataset of Hindu-Muslim violence

in the period 1950 to 1995 in India.8 Varshney proposed a theory founded on the con-

tact hypothesis. He argues for the presence or absence of inter-ethnic civic and asso-

ciational networks as the key variable for variations in occurrence of violence,

assuming that the elected state would act in a politically strategic manner.9 Using the

same dataset, Wilkinson offered a more testable theory that posits the ethnic riot in

the same framework of political logic as many culturalists do, but with considerable

predictive power. Wilkinson argues that ethnic riots “are best thought of as a solution

to the problem of how to change the salience of ethnic issues and identities among the

electorate in order to build a winning political coalition.”10 Violence that is precipi-

tated as a result of this ethnic mobilization is either allowed to continue or stopped,

depending on the will of the government that controls local law and order. His theory

is based on an analysis of 167 towns in Uttar Pradesh (north India) for the period

1970 to 1995 and, more recently, of districts in Gujarat for the 2002 Hindu-Muslim

violence where he finds violence to have broken out in the most competitive seats.11

The Gujarat violence of 2002 is significant for recording the highest annual death

toll in any event of Hindu-Muslim violence in a single state in the history of indepen-

dent India: 984 people, predominantly Muslims, were killed following the death of 59

Hindu passengers on a train near Godhra on February 27. The “post-Godhra” violence,

Dhattiwala and Biggs 485

as it is called, continued unceasingly for four months and then, intermittently, for

another six months. Most shocking was the spread of large-scale violence to rural areas.

This was unique and contrary to established literature that treated ethnic violence “an

urban phenomenon rooted among the petty bourgeoisie.”12 Massacres of rural Muslims

by thousands of villagers—many neighbors—were rampant and reported widely.13

People belonging to the Scheduled Tribes in the eastern tribal belt of Gujarat mobilized

by the thousands to set upon Muslim people and their properties with an unprecedented

fury.14 Among the manifold consequences of the violence, is the biggest string of

Islamic terror attacks on India in the past decade; members of terrorist organizations

have cited retaliation for the Gujarat riots as one of the key reasons for the attacks.15

Like its predecessors, the anti-Muslim violence was termed a “pogrom” that the

Sangh Parivar planned and executed—with support of the Bharatiya Janata Party

(BJP) government in the state—for electoral benefits in the subsequent assembly elec-

tions.16 The Sangh Parivar (Family of the Sangh or network of Hindutva associations),

is a Hindu nationalist organization in India, whose principal affiliates are the BJP, the

political wing; the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), a paramilitary social body

for Hindu males; and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), a religious body for the con-

solidation and service of Hinduism. Although BJP complicity would explain the high

scale of violence, it does not without further refinement, explain the uneven distribu-

tion of violence across Gujarat. Our paper investigates various economic, social, and

political factors that could account for variations in violence. It also examines whether

the violence influenced the BJP’s subsequent electoral performance.

1. Violence in Gujarat in 2002

Gujarat did not experience extreme Hindu-Muslim violence during Partition in

1947.17 Since then, however, it holds the dubious distinction of being the Indian state

with the highest per capita rate of deaths in Hindu-Muslim violence.18 One plausible

explanation is the amorphous nature of caste, which promotes the integration of upper

and middle castes. Caste stratification is more pronounced in other states, which expe-

rience more caste violence but less ethnic violence.19

The first large-scale Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat occurred in 1969, in

Ahmedabad city, following an argument over cows disrupting a Muslim religious pro-

cession. It claimed around 600 lives in five days.20 The violence is usually explained as

the result of communal propaganda by the BJP (then called the Bharatiya Jana Sangh)

and two other parties, dominated by upper-caste Patidars (or Patels) and Vaniyas.21 In

the 1970s, the Congress faced a serious challenge to its power in the state, but it eventu-

ally established a stable coalition of caste and religion known as ‘KHAM’: Kshatriyas

(a political alliance of upper-caste Rajputs and lower-caste Kolis), Harijans (Scheduled

Castes), Adivasis (Scheduled Tribes), and Muslims. In 1981 and then in 1985, violence

occurred in Ahmedabad city between upper-caste Hindus and Scheduled Castes.

Although the first was entirely a caste-based conflict, the anti-reservation riots of 1985

transformed into a Hindu-Muslim conflict within one month.22 The transformation has