Contents: Introduction: The Social Sciences and the Economic and Political Weekly on Hindu–Muslim Conflict Sanjay Palshikar andSatish Deshpande Section I General Surveys of Sectarian Violence Introduction to Section I 1. Communal Conflict after 1950 A Perspective Asghar Ali Engineer 2. Secularism and Communalism Imtiaz Ahmad 3. Communal Violence in India Gopal Krishna 4. Revisiting Communalism and Fundamentalism in India Surya Prakash Upadhyay andRowena Robinson Section II Theoretical and Conceptual Issues Introduction to Section II 5. An Electoral Theory of Communal Riots? Ashutosh Varshney 6. Communal Riots in India Steven I. Wilkinson 7. Development of an Institutionalised Riot System in Meerut City, 1961 to 1982 Paul R. Brass 8. Muzaffarnagar Riots Perils of Patronage Democracy WardBerenschot 9. Institutional Communalism in India Pritam Singh 10. Communalism and the Consuming Subject ArvindRajagopal 11. Always Already Secular? Afterthoughts on the Secular–Communal Question Sasheej Hegde 12. Left Secularists and Communalism Dharma Kumar 13. In Defence of the Fragment Writing about Hindu–Muslim Riots in India Today Gyanendra Pandey Section III Communal Politics Introduction to Section III 14. Social and Economic Compulsions behind Communalism A Case Study Ratna Dutta 15. Religion and Politics Role of Islam in Modern India Moin Shakir 16. Muslim Communalism Romesh Thapar 17. Political Economy of Communalism in Contemporary India Imtiaz Ahmed 18. Congress (I), Communist Parties and Communalism A. R. Desai 19. Cultural Context of Communalism in India Rajni Kothari 20. Muslims in a Multi-Religious Society Asghar Ali Engineer 21. The Woman as Communal Subject Rashtrasevika Samiti and Ram Janmabhoomi Movement Tanika Sarkar 22. Gender and Communal Riots Bhavna Mehta andTrupti Shah 23. Indian Muslims since Partition Balraj Puri 24. Putting Gujarat in Perspective Steven I. Wilkinson 25. Communal Upheaval as Resurgence of Social Darwinism Jan Breman 26. Memories, Saffronising Statues and Constructing Communal Politics Badri Narayan 27. Judicial Inquiries into Communal Violence Relevance of Vishnu Sahai Commission Rajeshwari 28. Communal Riots in Uttar Pradesh Badri Narayan Section IV Accounts and Analyses of Specific Riots Introduction to Section IV 29. Communal Riots in Gujarat Report of a Preliminary Investigation Ghanshyam Shah 30. Communal Violence in India A Study of Communal Disturbance in Delhi: The Riot of 5 May 1974 Gopal Krishna 31. Understanding Communal Violence Nizamuddin Riots PradipDatta, Biswamoy Pati, Sumit Sarkar, Tanika Sarkar andSambuddha Sen 32. Khurja Riots 1990–91 Understanding the Conjuncture Uma Chakravarti, Prem Chowdhury, PradipDatta, Zoya Hasan, Kumkum Sangari andTanika Sarkar 33. Communal Violence in Jaipur Shail Mayaram 34. Of Communal Consciousness and Communal Violence Impressions from Post-Riot Surat Sudhir Chandra 35. Identity, Communal Consciousness and Politics Ghanshyam Shah 36. When Riots are not Merely Local Bringing the State Back in, Bijnor 1988–92 Amrita Basu 37. The Bijnor Riots, October 1990 Collapse of a Mythical Special Relationship? Roger Jeffery andPatricia M. Jeffery 38. Hashimpura Killings Is there any Hope of Justice? Iqbal Ansari Since Independence, India has witnessed communal clashes between Hindu and Muslim groups. Commentators and social scientists in India have been understandably concerned with these clashes, as well as the peculiar nature of such communal violence in the country. Violent incidents continue to rock the nation, making this field a particularly important area of study. Sectarian Violence in India offers a cumulative account of social science research on the crucially important subject of communal violence from the late 1960s until about 2015. It brings together a critical selection of articles on sectarian violence in the post-Independence era from the Economic and Political Weekly, a journal that has best represented social scientists over the years and is the single largest source of studies on this subject. Thefour sections of this volume study the nature of communal violence in India; offer observations on the theoretical and conceptual issues relating to such violence; probe the complicated and causal role of politics in communal violence; and provide accounts of some of the riots that have occurred in independent India. The chapters cover a wide variety of factors, including—but not limited to—religion, vote bank politics and the trail of money in such seemingly ‘social’ issues. They also explore how such violence affects other social institutions, such as caste and gender. The volume, which contains the work of some of India’s best-known scholars, will be of interest to students and scholars of sociology and political science.