| Publication |
2010.
|
| Summary/Abstract |
Indian nationalists embraced the Partition of the subcontinent in 1947 in part because it appeared to offer a solution to the intractable 'communal problem' that had plagued the last three-quarters of a century of British rule; and at first the surgery of Partition seemed to make a difference. The incidence of overt 'communalism', in the shape of inter-ethnic collective violence between groups self-identified as 'Hindus' and 'Muslims', fell sharply after 1947 and remained low throughout the 1950s and early 1960s. But the remission did not last. Seventy-five significant communal incidents were recorded in 1955. The annual figure for 1965 was 173, for 1975 it was 205 and for 1985, 525.1 After a relative lull in the late 1980s, there was a further escalation in the last years of the twentieth century and in the first quinquennium of the twenty-first during which over 3,000 people were killed in the post-Ayodhya riots of 1992-93 and at least 1000 in the Gujarat pogrom of 2002. The level of communal violence in India today is greater, by a good margin, than it was in the late colonial era, and riots afflict far more of the country. No less than a quarter of India's 450 districts are now classified by the Home Ministry as 'hypersensitive'.
|