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In this paper the author revisits her book, Citizenship and Its Discontents: An Indian History (2013), to examine its central themes—status, rights and identity—in relation to political developments in India since 2014. The paper argues and provides evidence for, firstly, the greater consolidation of a jus sanguinis citizenship regime, with an attenuation of religion-neutral laws of citizenship; secondly, a shift from a rights-based conception of social citizenship to a contributory approach to welfare, now burdened with the requirement of a biometric identity; and, finally, the routinisation and normalisation of identitarian violence against Dalits and Muslims, rendering their citizenship even more precarious. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2014 Lok Sabha elections witnessed a significant shift in the political spectrum of the Bodo Territorial Autonomous District (BTAD) in Assam, with non-Bodos voting en masse for an independent candidate, a former United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) militant who was backed by a collective of non-Bodo organisations. Using the elections as a focal point, this paper aims to explore the larger political dynamics, political mobilisation and shifting alliances within a framework of contentious politics and collective action that unfurled during the elections and eventually led to an episode of targeted violence against the Muslim community in BTAD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent writing on religion in Gujarat has often confused political rhetoric with common religious belief and practice. Thus, religious categories have become caricatures standing for sociological realities and totalised worldviews. In this scheme, ‘Hindus’ and ‘Muslims’ are supposed to believe different things which ensure that they see and act in the world quite differently. In this paper, I examine the narratives of blame that emerged after the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat. The ethnography suggests that although religious identity plays a role in the way blame is cast, people of different religious communities also use common frames of logic and their shared experiences of shock and alienation to explain catastrophe. The religious reasoning of blame narratives is therefore shown to have a broader cultural existence outside the boundaries of particular religious identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the emergence of violent child identity politics in a communally sensitive urban slum in Hyderabad, a city in southern India. My ethnographic landscape is Sultanpur, a Muslim-dominated ghetto in the northern quarters of Hyderabad, which has been marked by decades of hostilities between local Hindus and Muslims. These tensions had everyday and extreme manifestations (ranging from quotidian expressions of symbolic violence to rioting, looting and bomb blasts) which increased the vulnerabilities of Muslim male children in the slums; the latter being humiliated by ordinary passers-by in times of peace, and at other times being attacked by rioting mobs. To counter their victimhood and organise their own retribution, sections of local boys in Sultanpur, aged between 9 and 14 years, co-ordinated themselves into child squads (bacchon ke fauj). These child vigilantes patrolled the slum borders and common public places, constantly establishing a disciplinary control over fragile aspects of ghetto life. For example, the male child squads not only aggressively prevented members of other communities from entering the slum, they also monitored the movement of Sultanpur-wallahs, often physically assaulting local women who were caught having affairs with Hindu men. In my paper I show how the power, presence and practices of these child squads upturned traditional structures of male and female authority, contested conventional notions of male childhood in a volatile urban space, and sustained nascent masculinities within the moral and social economy of impoverished Muslim male children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented on the deteriorating relationship between Bangladesh and India. It argues that emergence of Islamic theme in the Bangladesh's culture and politics is not necessarily due to economic and political issues or any whimsical behaviour of political leaders of India towards Bangladesh. The author states that the recent deterioration is a reflection of deeply embedded historical animosities between the Hindus and Muslims in India in general and particularly Bengal in India.

The article reports on understanding the 1993 Mumbai Bombings as seen in the Madrassas and the hierarchy of terror. The Madrassas which are the Islamic religious schools and colleges of the early eighteenth century were admired by the Europeans. However, their image has changed and are now seen as providing poor quality education, and characterized as jihadi factories which produce intolerant and violent Islamists.

The Gujarat Hindu–Muslim clashes of 2002 were the first major Indian riots of the 24-hour television age—and television became central to the politics of the violence. This paper examines the role of television in the shaping of the riots and its impact on the subsequent election campaign in Gujarat. It seeks, thereby, to demonstrate the change in Indian politics brought about by the advent of satellite television. It will show how the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) skilfully used television coverage of the riots and mediated the message of this coverage for its own political purposes. Secondly, as an analytical aid, it compares the Gujarat case with the television coverage of the civil rights disturbances in the American South in the 1950s and 1960s, and British television coverage of the inner-city disturbances in 1981. It will be seen that in all three countries, the reportage was remarkably similar, and that many of the same issues were raised. In each case television clearly introduced a new factor into the political matrix. Nevertheless, Gujarat was different because of the nature of the round-the-clock live coverage television provided of that event. Generally that coverage was hostile to the Hindu Right forces affiliated with the Gujarat BJP government. But the ruling BJP managed to portray the media coverage of the violence as an attack on Gujarati regional honour, successfully converting it into an emotive election issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]