World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

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insticutions, crucial to establishing networks of credit (and thus trust and reciprocity), also remained intra-communal.
As a result, what Varshney calls Calicut's "thick civil society" has made the exploitation of communal tensions in that city by politicians difficult. Conflict, especially labor conflicts, have generally been between castes. In Aligarh, in contrast, the BJP has flourished. For example, during the Ayodhya crisis, Aligarh exploded into violence. There were 75 deaths. Newspapers passed on rumors without substantiation. Peace committees could not be formed or the peace committees tended to be intra-communal, uncoordinated with their counterparts in the corresponding community, and thus ineffective. BJP and Muslim politicians could not be brought together. In fact, they had no need to cooperate, given their segregated constituencies. At the same time, Calicut was tense, but there were no riots. Instead, peace committees, organized by various inter-communal civic networks, were effective in quelling rumors, supplying reliable information and presenting the city with a sense of Muslim/Hindu cooperation at a time of great stress. These successful efforts, according to Varshney, were rooted in local neighborhoods and based on pre-existing social networks no more glamorous than the Lions Club and the Rotary, the rickshaw pullers association, theater groups and science societiesì all of which constitute social networks that are voluntary and inter-communal.
The second set of cities studied by Varshney is Lucknow and Hyderabad. Once again, the data indicate that the presence of inter-communal civic networks is an important factor in predicting a propensity to violence or the lack thereof. Like Aligarh and Calicut, Lucknow and Hyderabad resemble each other in significant ways. Both are about one-third Muslim in their populations. Both were Mughal cities with Urdu speaking elites. Both are centers of the textile industry. Lucknow, however, has suffered only one major riot since 1924, while Hyderabad has been one of India's most riotprone cities since 1938. Lucknow has been so immune to rioting that even during the two major crises for inter-communal relations in India during the twentieth century, Partition and the Ayodhya incident of 1992, Lucknow remained tense, but free of violence. This is all the more remarkable given the fact that Lucknow is only eighty miles from Ayodhya. Hyderabad, in contrast, was turbulent from 1938-1948, relatively quiet in the 1950s, and turbulent again in the 1960s. Since 1978, this city has been especially plagued by violence.
How does Varshney explain this contrast? As a step toward recognizing the role of inter-communal civic organizations in the prevention of violence, Varshney notes that intra-group conflict is a predictor of inter-group peace. In Lucknow, in the past and in the present, Sunni and Shiite Muslim conflict has played a significant role in city politics. Prior to independence,
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