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2 - EXPLAINING TOWN-LEVEL VARIATION IN HINDU-MUSLIM VIOLENCE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Steven I. Wilkinson
Affiliation:
Duke University, North Carolina
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Summary

Most explanations for Hindu-Muslim violence focus on the importance of town-level socioeconomic factors similar to those identified in the broader comparative literature on ethnic riots. The town-level explanations focus on such factors as the relative size of a town's minority and majority populations, a town's total population, the divisive effects caused by the presence of refugees from previous ethnic conflicts in a town, or the degree of Hindu-Muslim economic competition in an ethnically divided labor market. In the past few years, several major studies of communal violence in India have also highlighted the importance of such variables as a town's level of interethnic “civic engagement” or the presence or absence of “institutionalized riot systems” to explain why some towns are violent while others are not.

This book is focused, in contrast, squarely on the state level and on political incentives. While town-level factors need to be taken into account, I argue that it is even more important to understand why India's states sometimes use force to prevent riots and at other times allow or even seem to encourage violence. Force matters because studies of riots have found that rioters are generally unwilling, whatever the strength of the town-level factors promoting violence, to confront armed and determined police or soldiers who are prepared to use deadly force to stop them.

Type
Chapter
Information
Votes and Violence
Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India
, pp. 19 - 62
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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