Communal Violence and Inter-Community Relations - Indian Social ...

COMMUNAL VIOLENCE AND INTER-COMMUNITY RELATIONS 33
when, thanks to the distantiation, the objects at which the bureaucratic
operation is aimed, can and are, reduced to a set of quantitative
measures. Dehumanised objects cannot possibly possess a “cause”,
much less a “just” one; they have no “interests” to be considered,
indeed no claim to subjectivity. A strong identification with the same
leads to social death, i.e., the natural death which follows subsequently
is merely a corollary-anticipated and desired one!
Ritualised riots and disparaged others
The expressions of violence which concerned people at large in the
wake of the Ramjanma bhoomi agitation was crafted around the
perceptions of each others’ identity between the two communities. It
believed that conflict can be caused by accentuating the feelings of
threat for the majority community and by further highlighting the Muslims
as disparaged others. Such threat perceptions were drawn from the
mythical version of a tense past, an unresolved or knotty loss in the
public memory. Rituals are associated with and are performed according
to a given set of rites and happen to be a detailed method laying down
procedures for following up. Rituals also channelise the aspirations into
expressions of collectivity through a progression of performative acts.
Rituals have much more agency and dynamism than what constitutes
routine. When rituals are invented and propagated they are likely to
generate ritualised minds in ritualised spaces. Participative minds in
such altered and designated spaces find arenas where important and
critical reality is perched. On occasions, activities resemble customary
practices, albeit conducted with more dramatic flair when othering is
accomplished as critical social reality. Groups affirm their identities
through practices that ritualise the routine of everyday life. Annihilations
were always the ideal-typical examples of the violent episodes and
there was no dearth of them in the episodes of violence we witnessed
since the unlocking of the gate at Faizabad. However, there are other
facets of violence which have not received attention to the same degree
i.e. executing deprivation for disparaged others, prohibiting purchase
from their shops, refusing to supply them basic necessities such as
milk, etc. Besides mental processes: feelings, attitudes and values that
individuals and communities were made to hold, grounds were prepared
for eruption, legitimisation and subsequent glorification of violence. Hate,
fear and mistrust as driving feelings were deliberately pushed in the
cognitive structures by the diverse agencies and instruments of Sangh