Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Images
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Explaining Variation in Violence: An Introduction
- 2 Peace and Violence: Concepts and Theory
- 3 The Political Logic of Violence: Anti-Muslim Pogrom in Gujarat
- 4 Ahmedabad
- 5 Spatial Configuration: Variation in Violence across Neighbourhoods
- 6 Monitoring and Control in Two Peaceful Neighbourhoods
- 7 So Near, and Yet So Far: Group Relations between Victims and Perpetrators of Violence
- 8 The BJP's Muslim Supporters in Ahmedabad
- 9 Ethnic Violence: Connecting the Macro with the Micro
- Bibliography
- Index
7 - So Near, and Yet So Far: Group Relations between Victims and Perpetrators of Violence
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 26 April 2019
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Tables
- List of Images
- List of Figures
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Explaining Variation in Violence: An Introduction
- 2 Peace and Violence: Concepts and Theory
- 3 The Political Logic of Violence: Anti-Muslim Pogrom in Gujarat
- 4 Ahmedabad
- 5 Spatial Configuration: Variation in Violence across Neighbourhoods
- 6 Monitoring and Control in Two Peaceful Neighbourhoods
- 7 So Near, and Yet So Far: Group Relations between Victims and Perpetrators of Violence
- 8 The BJP's Muslim Supporters in Ahmedabad
- 9 Ethnic Violence: Connecting the Macro with the Micro
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Rumabanu, a Muslim housewife, has lived in Maniyarwada, a Muslim-majority neighbourhood of 900 residents, for the past 23 years. She shares the street with members of five other Muslim households, all of whom, she says, had witnessed the violence in 1985, 1992, and 2002. ‘I would be very happy to move to a place like Satellite (in western Ahmedabad), but can't afford it. They don't have to worry about riots and liquor and gambling.…’ Rumabanu was well aware of the fact that the Satellite neighbourhood was red-lined for Muslims, and to me she was merely voicing an aspiration. Rumabanu then takes me inside her house, and points to two to three jagged protrusions on the brick wall. It's a common back wall separating her from her next-door neighbour, a Hindu, residing in the adjoining Pithawali chali. ‘They tried to push swords through this wall in 2002! Nothing happened, but the mark is still visible.’ I was surprised that Rumabanu did not know the name of her neighbour with the common wall except that they were Hindus. ‘Our doors open on the other side, we rarely pass each other,’ she said.
—Fieldnotes, Gomtipur, 21 February 2015Who is a ‘neighbour’? Bulmer's words capture the most intuitive definition. They are ‘quite simply people who live near one another’ (Bulmer, 1986: 18). Indeed, geographical proximity is an essential characteristic of being a neighbour. Greater proximity leads to greater opportunity for contact between individuals. It follows then that people may choose to initiate contact and sustain it, depending on whether they find the outcome of engagement beneficial. The point is, proximity makes contact inevitable. As Cheshire (2015) says, even when it is someone whom you do not wish to actively interact with, physical proximity by itself makes it difficult to ignore them entirely.
Most studies favour contact between ethnic groups and find strong evidence supporting diversity in neighbourhoods. Mixing is desirable for it can not only encourage beneficial alliances across group boundaries but also reduce existing prejudice between groups (for example, Allport, 1954; also Piekut and Valentine, 2017; Pettigrew, 1998; Schmid et al., 2008), and may even deter future violence (Jha, 2014; Varshney, 2002). Spatial scale is crucial here. Parts of the world where different religions, races, and nationalities are in frequent contact are also prone to high levels of conflict, even violence.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Keeping the PeaceSpatial Differences in Hindu–Muslim Violence in Gujarat in 2002, pp. 133 - 146Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019