Societal Impact of Intergroup Violence in South Asia

Violence: An international journal is launching a call for papers on the theme "Societal Impact of Intergroup Violence in South Asia". This issue will be edited by guest editor Amit Ranjan, a Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore.

For its general articles’ section, Violence: An international journal is also welcoming papers that deal with issues of violence and exiting violence.

 

Violence does not always mean the use of physical force to hurt others. It is also psychological, affecting the victim or those who always live in fear of getting attacked by an individual or group for various reasons, such as belonging to a different group or not complying with socially and politically set norms. In most cases, violence is inflicted by the powerful individual or group to maintain its social, political, and economic power in society and over the state’s institutions. The weaker individual or group usually uses violence as a countermeasure to protect itself. However, in some cases, a militant section from the weaker group uses violence as an effective means to achieve its political goal. For example, the Liberation of Tamil Tigers Elam (LTTE) had used violence to achieve the Tamils’ demands in Sri Lanka.  Likewise, many other insurgent/ militant/terrorist groups representing the minority groups are active in various South Asian countries.

South Asia, like many other postcolonial countries, is a violent region where differences among the groups often cause violence. The intergroup violence in South Asia is mainly driven by factors such as historical differences and disputes over competitive political demands, unequal position in the social hierarchy, contest over resource allocation, and the rise of majoritarianism in all countries in the region. Hindu-Muslim and Hindu-Sikh differences in India have caused violence between them in the past. At present, due to the rise of Hindu majoritarianism in India, the Muslims feel that they may face attack if not comply with the majoritarian norms established for the group. Hindus are also divided along caste lines. There has been caste-based violence in India. However, unlike communal violence, caste-based violence has been mainly at the local level and not spread across the country, except on one occasion when the upper castes protested caste-based reservation to the other backward class in 1989-90. In Pakistan, Hindus remain second-class citizens living under fear. Many of the Hindus from Pakistan have crossed into the Indian side of the border to protect their life. In Bangladesh, Hindus had faced violence from the Islamists. The radical Sunnis in Pakistan have also been uncomfortable with other Islamic sects, such as the Shias. Ahmadis were declared non-Muslims and have been subject to attack by the Islamists. In Bangladesh, Hindus had faced attacks from the Islamists. The Urdu-speaking Muslims in Bangladesh have faced systemic violence from the state and society because of their link with Pakistan. Sri Lanka faced violence during the civil war (1983-2009) chiefly between the Sri Lankan state and the LTTE.  During the decades of civil war, many innocent Tamils from the northern region of Sri Lanka faced violence from both the LTTE and the Sri Lankan state. 

The intergroup violence has a societal impact. It disturbs the social fabric in a plural society and creates tension among the people belonging to different groups. The intergroup violence also widens the trust deficit between people belonging to different communal groups, keeping the society and the state in a state of perpetual tension. The societal violence in South Asia is political in nature. In many cases, violence is used to attain power over other groups by silencing them. The political parties have also used communal violence for electoral success by polarising one group against the other.

 

The SI uses Social Identity Theory, developed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner, to argue how identity and identification of “us” and “them” causes intergroup violence in the respective South Asian countries. Going beyond Tajfel and Turner’s framework, this SI examines how the division between “us” and “them” keeps groups united from the effects of intra-group social contradictions and confrontation. The SI also evaluates how, due to multiple identities, most of the South Asian people wear, neither “us” nor “them” is permanently fixed. One may be “us” under one form of identity categorization, but part of “them” according to another.

The objective of this Special Issue (SI) is to examine the societal impact of intergroup violence in South Asia. It aims to answer the following questions: Why do different groups in respective South Asian countries fight? How does the intergroup violence affect the plural character of the society? How political is the societal violence in South Asia? How do minorities react to violence against them? The SI mainly makes two arguments. First, the rise of majoritarianism in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh has increased societal violence, where the different groups are portrayed as alien others and not part of the majoritarian nationalists’ imagination. Second, in many cases, intergroup violence takes place to establish the social and political power of one group over the other. The intergroup violence is also used to keep the minority groups under constant fear, which helps in their social, political, and economic subjugation by the majority. The SI will focus on the intergroup violence due to differences and disputes between the multiple identity groups living in the respective South Asian countries.  

Contributions in the SI will be theoretical, focusing on the following, though non-exclusive, themes:

1. Politics of intergroup violence in South Asia
2. Majoritarianism and the intergroup violence in South Asia
3. Societal impact of intergroup violence in South Asia
4. Political Economy of Intergroup Violence in South Asia

 

Today, violence, in all its forms, constitutes a vast field of research in the social sciences.

The same is not true of preventing and exiting violence, which do not have their own well-structured space within the humanities. Much more empirical than theoretical, understanding of these issues is produced more by actors (NGOs, associations), experts, and practitioners than by social science scholars.

Violence: An international journal endeavors to gather together and support a large community of scholars and practitioners, focusing on two complementary yet distinct scientific and intellectual issues: the analysis of violence, in its diverse manifestations, and preventing and exiting violence.

In doing so, Violence: An international journal aims to develop understanding about violence, but also to build up a delineated field of research for preventing and exiting violence, with its contributions and debates.

Each issue opens with a series of general articles, which are be followed by a theme section, composed by articles, debates and interviews. Violence: An international journal also makes a special effort to link together research in the social sciences and other fields of knowledge, forging bonds with literary and artistic circles in particular, with contributions dealing with exiting violence through the lens of art.

Violence: An international journal has the ambition to reach a readership composed of academics, but also a larger audience, including the actors involved in preventing and exiting violence: NGOs, associations, politics, legal experts, and civil society. Articles for Violence: An international journal will nonetheless go through the usual process of academic journals. Once accepted by the editorial board, each article will be sent for peer-review. Changes may then be asked to the author.

The journal is published twice a year in English by Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme and SAGE Publications.

 

Articles should include a summary, a detailed bibliography and a short biography. Each article should be between 5,000 and 8,000 words in length (including footnotes, bibliography, biography). It should be sent, preferably, in Word format and use, systematically, Harvard Reference Style, as follows:

Brague, R. Sur la religion, Paris: Flammarion, France, 2018.

Cavanaugh, W. T. The Myth of Religious Violence: Secular Ideology and the Roots of Modern Conflict, New York: Oxford University Press: New York, 2009.

Juergensmeyer, M. Ed. Violence and the Sacred in the Modern World, Abingdon: Routlege, 2020.

Juergensmeyer, M., Kitts, M., Jerryson, M. The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Violence, New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.

Kaplan, J. Radical Religion and Violence, Abingdon: Routlege, 2015.

Murphy, A. R. Ed. The Blackwell Companion to Religion and Violence, John Wiley & Sons, 2011.

 

We ask you to pay particular attention to the quality of your writing style.

To contribute to Violence: An international journal, please send an article, fully written, either for the general articles’ section or for a theme section.