Howard Spodek

From Gandhi to Violence: Ahmedabad's 1985 Riots in Historical Perspective

In 1985 riots racked the western Indian city of Ahmedabad, continuing for a period of almost half a year, form February through July, leaving some 275 people dead, thousands injured, tens of thousands homeless, and a loss of property and trade estimated at Rs 2,200 crores (US

In the Hindutva Laboratory: Pogroms and Politics in Gujarat, 2002

1.75 thousand million) ( India Today , 13 August 1985, pp. 60 and 119), in ‘the most alarmingly sustained bout of rioting (as opposed to the sort of terrorism Punjab suffered…) since Indias independence’ (Manor 1986: 102).

Local Meets Global Establishing New Perspectives in Urban History—Lessons from Ahmedabad

Communal violence wracked the state of Gujarat and the city of Ahmedabad once again in 2002, leaving some 2,000 people dead. Because the ruling BJP party had proclaimed Gujarat the ‘Laboratory of Hindutva’, analysts throughout India saw the violence as BJP policy and debated its possible spillover effects elsewhere. This paper finds that in a period already marked by stressful economic and cultural change and attended by political uncertainty, some BJP leaders gambled that an attack on Gujarats Muslims, and on the rule of law in general, would attract followers and voters. Their gamble proved correct at least in the short run. This paper examines the cultural, social, geographical and educational restructuring that is occurring, through legal and illegal struggles, and the impact of the violence upon these processes. It examines the declining status of Muslims as a result of continuous propaganda against them. It analyzes the degree to which the state was damaged as a result of the decision for violence and asks about the degree to which leaders do, or do not, wish to ‘put it behind them’, and suggests that Ahmedabads problems are widely shared in both the developing and developed worlds.

S. Ambirajan, Classical Political Economy and British Policy in India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978. Eric Stokes, The Peasant and the Raj. Studies in Agrarian Society and Peasant Rebellion in Colonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978

Urban theorists assert that cities need to be understood not only in terms of their internal systems but also in terms of their national and global connections. This study provides an analysis of these global connections for the city of Ahmedabad, India, through the twentieth century and into the twenty-first. It highlights three “events” and discusses their international ramifications: the arrival of Gandhi in 1915; the increasingly global reach of local manufacturing and cultural institutions; and the international censure of the Hindu–Muslim violence in the city, especially in 2002. It closes with a plea to urban historians to heed the arguments of the theoreticians and consider fully the significance of global connections in the study of individual urban histories.

Book Reviews : Christopher John Baker, The Politics of South India: 1920-1937. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976, xxiii, 363 pp. Maps, Tables, Bio graphical notes, Glossary, Bibliography, Index

orientations, for example, Eickelman’s Moroccan Islam. Shaban’s book is a retelling of the history of Islam from its rise up to the Abbasid period. The author’s claim is that his is a new interpretation of that period. Students of Islamic studies have become increasingly aware of the utility of interpretive frameworks drawn from social theory for posing and investigating questions about their subject. In the hands of the best proponents of this approach-among them Watt, Izutsu and Rodinson-the results have been impressive. Shaban clearly sees himself as part of this trend. His framework, however, is an economic determinism which leads to a clumsy, utilitarian view of religion. On page 9, the author tells us that Muhammad’s message has to be understood and explained with reference to its socioeconomic environment, adding: In Makka, this meant trade. To attempt a study of Muhammad’s activities in Makka and Arabia without taking trade into consideration is equivalent to studying contemporary Kuwayt or Arabia without paying attention to oil.

B. R. Tomlinson, The Indian National Congress and the Raj, 1929-1942: The Penultimate Phase. Toronto, Macmillan of Canada, 1976, viii, 208 pp., Map, Notes, Bibliography, Glossary, Index

is the kind of foreknowledge the reader should have, if he is to find this book useful and enlightening. Quite a few technical errors are perhaps unavoidable in such a book, but some crop up which are surprising. It’s been quite a while since I noted a misspelling of my old favorite &dquo;minuscule&dquo; (p. 1), and here and there footnote numbers are missing (p. 250) or garbled (p. 319). And I am driven to mention a subject on which I have not before seen any adverse comment in print, but which has become a personal bite noire ripe for immediate exorcism from textbooks and academic works. I refer to the in-

Review Essay : PLURALIST POLITICS IN COLONIAL INDIAN CITIES C. A. BAYLY. The Local Roots of Indian Politics: Allahabad, 1880-1920. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. Pp. xviii, 314, maps, tables, bibliography, index:

The Uncertain Verdict is a study of the 1969 mid-term elections for state assemblies in Bihar, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Relaying extensively on the voting behavior studies developed by American scholars, Ramashray Roy of the Indian Council of Social Research examines the complex processes of interaction among socio-economic conditions, voter attitudes, and democratic development in the four Indian states. Roy advances the commonly held hypothesis that if political instability undermines development efforts and frustrates the popular desire for a better life, it might produce disaffection, apathy and alienation toward the regime and might further popular sentiment for an authoritarian system. The author finds such factors as the rigidity of the social structure, the extreme socio-economic inequalities, the deep-rooted primordial loyalties, and the unfamiliarity with democratic institutions impeding the process of democratization in India. Moreover, his examination of voting behavior in Indian states shows the public’s favorable evaluation of President’s rule in comparison to the pessimistic attitude held toward popular government. Nonetheless, there are many flaws in his assertion, &dquo;democratic institutions have enjoyed only a short existence and it cannot be

Book Reviews : John A. Harrison (ed.), South and Southeast Asia. Volume 3 of the Association of Asian Studies' Thirtieth Anniversary Commemorative Series. Tucson, The Univer sity of Arizona Press, 1972, pp. 246,

Cambridge University has developed a school of Indian history significant for urban historians. It employs political sociology in sorting the various groups which entered the political arena; their emergence, transformation, and interactions. Its central issues are the increasing scale of, and linkages in, Indian society.: the monetized economy; the spread of literacy; the growth of governmental institutions; and the network of communication and transportation which, under British

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tions originate in at least ten different fields. All, however, reflect the hallmarks and raison d’etre of area studies : at least some degree of multidisciplinary synthesis and considerable linguistic expertise. Freedman and Toply, anthropologists, compare Chinese religious organization in Singapore with that in the villages of the mainland and find both a (temporary?) disjuncture between religious and political organization and an end to the previous close relationship between local shrine and its surrounding neighborhood. Barrier examines the interaction between the Arya Samaj religious reform organization and the Indian National Congress in the Punjab around 1900. Staal demonstrates the precision of linguistic analysis as a method of studying cultural diffusion between the great and little traditions in India.