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| Srl | Item |
| 1 |
ID:
179990
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| Summary/Abstract |
In this introduction, we situate the special section, ‘Containing Religious Offence beyond the Courts’, within and beyond existing scholarship on religious offence in South Asia. Much of this scholarship focuses on the unintended effects of blasphemy laws, showing, for instance, that laws presumably intended to promote religious tolerance end up informing, if not encouraging, disputes around religious sensitivities. But while debates about the effects of law are crucial, we suggest that a more nuanced understanding of religious offence can be gained if we look past full-blown legal proceedings and the spectacular violence performed in the streets during religious offence controversies. This collection, then, directs attention to the friction around religious sensitivities that are handled and often mitigated locally—either entirely outside the courts or through bottom-up initiatives that unfold in combination with, or as a reaction to, top-down measures. Drawing on the extensive empirical field research of six scholars of religion and politics, these essays document existing containment modalities in diverse geographical and socio-religious settings in India and critically scrutinise their functioning and outcomes. They explicitly engage with critical understandings of peace and with scholarship on the micro-mechanism of coexistence and, in so doing, open up new avenues of enquiry about religious offence.
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| 2 |
ID:
179996
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| Summary/Abstract |
In the 1980s and 1990s, during the Ram Janmabhoomi movement, the Gyanvapi mosque in Banaras was identified by Hindu nationalists as the next place to be ‘liberated’ from Muslim presence. A security plan was then implemented by the government to prevent the occurrence of a ‘religious offence’ as specified in the Indian Penal Code, namely ‘destroying, damaging or defiling a place of worship’ (Section 295). Drawing on ethnographic research, this article explores religious offence within and beyond its legal definition and examines the contradictory impact that its containment through policing has on everyday life and interreligious relationships in the centre of Banaras.
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