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This article analyses the status of Indian Muslims in Malaysia from a historical perspective and its definition as a minority ethnic group. It also highlights the political reality of the Indian Muslims, particularly as a smaller and relatively insignificant minority group in comparison with the numerically larger Malays as well as the non-Muslim Chinese and Hindu Indians. It describes the social interactions of the various ethnic groups in Malaysia and the Indian Muslims as a minority fighting for their identity and survival. It discusses the “position” of the Indian Muslims with particular reference to Article 152 of the Malaysian Constitution which states that a Malay person is defined as one speaking the Malay language, practicing Malay customs, and following the religion of Islam. The great contributions of Indian Muslims are also elaborated. This inquiry highlights the reality facing the Indian Muslims in Malaysia today: they have no political power but remain a marginalized minority in the midst of Malay political domination and Chinese economic hegemony. Indeed they are facing the grim prospect of permanent bifurcation of their identity—some are slowly but surely being assimilated into the Malay cultural milieu, mainly through marriage and for political expediency, on the one hand and others stubbornly resist this cultural absorption, and resiliently retain and preserve their ethnic traditions and purity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article focuses on the ambivalent effect of religious autonomy in India and the outcome for democracy in the country. The Indian constitution guarantees autonomy to its religious minorities, and promises the minorities the freedom independently to manage their religious affairs in addition to a proportional share of the budget. At the same time, the constitution emphasizes the aspiration to legislate 'uniform personal laws' for all the citizens of India in accordance with the principles of secularism, equality and with India's self-definition as a civic nation. This recommendation has however remained a 'dead letter' until today. In this domain, the state has constituted a civic law for Hindus, which adjusts Hinduism to democratic principles. In this sense, the state has nationalized Hinduism, and the government has assumed authority and reformed Hindu civic and marriage laws. However, although they have tried, the state's legal and political institutions have not interfered thus far with Muslim marriage and religious laws. Muslims are committed to the Sharia while Hindus must obey the state's civic laws. By avoiding enforcement of affirmative action for Muslims in the spheres of political representation or public employment, while simultaneously prohibiting Hindus' group rights, and providing religious autonomy to the Muslim minority, the Constitution, which stresses so-called secularism as well as minority protection, intensifies the conflict between these two governance principles. The conclusion is that this situation not only leads to ideological conflicts and resource competition but also, overall, threatens the stability of India's democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the intensified communalization of civil society and the emergence of new modes of racism in contemporary India, this essay juxtaposes different histories of the Other through critical insights into the construction and demonization of the Indian Muslim. Working through anecdotes and fragments, bits and pieces of history, this disjunctive discourse on the Other attempts to trouble liberal assumptions of cultural identity by calling attention to the uncertainties of evidence by which ethnic identities are politicized in diverse ways. While critiquing the exclusionary mode of 'othering', the essay also calls attention to more internalized modes of disidentification and the double-edged benefits of political identity for the underprivileged and dispossessed, whose own assertions of the self invariably complicate official identitarian constructions. The enigmas of the self are perhaps most vivid in the brutal evidence of genocide, where the apparent 'dead certainty' of killing the Other has been interpreted as a means of making 'persons out of bodies' (Arjun Appadurai). Countering this position, the essay argues that ethnic violence is facilitated by the 'dead certainty' of (in)justice, reinforced by the 'banality of violence' legitimized through state-sponsored ethnic cleansing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the contribution of the book 'Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India,' by Ashutosh Varshney to the understanding of ethnicity. Discussion on the argument advocated in the book; Information on the relations between Hindus and Muslims; Conclusion.

The essay highlights the role of one individual, Nawab Siddiq Hasan Khan (1832-90), in writing the cultural and intellectual history of imperialisms. It brings his biography, journeys and intellectual forays together to show how he used the temporal moment of the mid 19th century 'age of revolts', and the spatial connectivity offered by British and Ottoman imperialisms and re-configured them to his own particular interests. Locating Siddiq Hasan in the connected histories of the British and Ottoman Empires, it views his in-house cosmopolitanism as a form of public conduct that was shaped by Islamic learning that cultivated urbane civility as Muslim universalist virtuous conduct. This was a form of cosmopolitanism enabled by imperial networks, informed by pre-colonial webs of interaction between India and West Asia, and deeply rooted in the scriptures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose - This study sets out to examine conflict style preferences in India and the predictive effects of various demographic variables on conflict style preference. Design/methodology/approach - Data were gathered in India (n = 827) among Muslims and Hindus. Conflict was measured using Oetzel's Conflict Style Measure. To answer the research questions, repeated measures ANOVA and multiple regressions were conducted. Findings - The findings reveal that conflict style preference among Hindus in India differs significantly and that Hindus prefer the integrating and dominating styles, whilst showing the least inclination towards the avoiding and obliging styles. Muslims prefer the integrating and compromising styles and least prefer the dominating and avoiding styles. Analyses of the demographic variables' predictive influence reveal that age and sex are significant predictors for all five conflict styles for both Muslims and Hindus. Education has a mixed predictive influence on conflict style among Hindus and Muslims. Research limitations/implications - Use of self-report instruments and the majority of the participants coming from middle-class backgrounds could limit the generalizability of the study. Practical implications - The study calls for conflict mediators to consider the influence of group membership and educational level on conflict management/resolution. The research also discusses national/international conflict intervention. Social implications - This paper informs individuals regarding the way in which two large religious and cultural groups differ in their approaches to conflict. For a nation that has experienced a history of conflict between these two cultural/religious groups, this paper can help shed light on how to bridge the conflict between them. Originality/value - There are no studies directly comparing the conflict styles of Muslims and Hindus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualizes security as a discourse of violence that masks violence in the name of counter-violence, killing in the name of protection. As the case of Hindutva in India illustrates, violence against minorities is normalized in the name of personal, communal, national and even international security. The will to secure the Self has as its corollary the will to make insecure the Other, the desire to control and use violence. Using the example of anti-Muslim violence in Gujarat in 2002, the paper examines some of the ways in which a stereotypical image of Muslim men (the figure of ‘the Muslim’) is seen as constituting the danger against which the Hindu body politic needs to be secured. The violence against minority Muslims is facilitated and justified in the name of achieving security for the Hindu Self at individual, community, national as well as international levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports on the bad state of relations between India's Hindus and Muslims during the early part of Indian Prime Minister V.P. Singh's administration. Singh's success in improving relations with the Sikh population of the Punjab by making a well publicized visit to the Golden Temple of Amritsar; Death of Muslims in the state of Bihar during disturbances in October 1989; Eruptions of violence in Kashmir.

Assesses the Muslim-Hindu conflict in India. Tenet of Hindutva, a Hindu far-right ideology; Analysis of the state-sponsored terror in Gujarat, India; Argument supporting the notion that a Hindu extremist takeover of India at the national level is highly unlikely; Support provided by U.S. right-wing Hindu groups to far-right groups in India.

There is an assumption that nationalist movements which are constituted by an ethnic majority are hostile towards all minorities, so how does one account for such a movement's affection for one minority and hostility for another? In this paper I explore this question using the case study of a Hindu nationalist movement in India called Hindutva which simultaneously expresses hostility towards Muslims and affection for another minority known as the Parsis. I argue in societies that imagine themselves as plural there is a type of nationalist thought premised upon the existence of both exemplary and threatening minorities. An exemplary minority is imagined as loyal and acculturating, illustrating both how a minority should relate to the majority and why other minorities are threatening. While an historical argument enables the distinction between the majority and minorities, a plural hierarchy of minorities is enabled by mythical stories of coexistence and conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reports the memory of the author, a Hindu neurosurgeon, treating a particular Muslim patient at J.J. Hospitals in Mumbai (Bombay). Hesitancy of the patient to let a Hindu doctor treat him; Assumption of the doctor that he was just another religious fanatic; Success of the doctor's treatment of the patient; Way that the situation represents how medicine can touch hearts, unite minds, bridge religious divides, and provide memories to cherish life long.

In the context of Hindu–Muslim relations in India, the present study (N = 87) utilized Integrated Threat Theory (Stephan & Stephan, 2000) to examine the mediating roles of intergroup anxiety, realistic and symbolic threats and the moderating role of group membership (Hindu vs. Muslim) in the relationships between cross-community contact, relative in-group status and prejudice. Overall, intergroup anxiety and realistic, but not symbolic, threat emerged as proximal predictors of prejudice and partial mediators between the predictor and criterion variables. But these findings were qualified by majority (Hindu) versus minority (Muslim) group membership. As predicted, while symbolic threat was a predictor of prejudice for Hindus, realistic threat was a paramount predictor for Muslims. In-group status was as a significant predictor for low-status minority group only. The results are discussed with reference to their potential implications for future research and interventions aimed at improving intergroup relations. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Investigates how the Muslim community of the Androth Island in India transformed a disagreement regarding Sufi ritual practice into a moral divide that sanctioned a provocative fatwa, mosque expulsions and violence. Factors which contributed to the conflict in the community; Impact of the ethnic and sectarian violence in Delhi, India, Karachi, Pakistan and Colombo, Sri Lanka on the religious conflict among the islanders; Effect of the conflict in the island on the growth of the Indian state.

This investigation draws upon my earlier analysis of the Bombay blockbuster Fanaa (Khan 'Nationalism'), transnational responses to Fanaa posted on an internet blog and on interviews with South Asian and Somali Muslims in Windsor and Mississauga, Ontario, two areas with substantial multiracial populations. I argue that although Fanaa's narrative strategies risk reinforcing stereotypes, they also initiate conversations about escalating tensions regarding citizenship and belonging among South Asians. The film emerges as a popular cultural text which allows transnational bloggers to use the anonymity of cyberspace and articulate hugely confrontational views, something they may do not in person. Moreover, as Canadian respondents view the film, it complicates the trauma of separation and dislocation which South Asian minorities, like other racialized peoples, face in Canada. Further, the respondents rework the limited repertoire of Fanaa in ways that involve ways of seeing which both confirm and challenge the Orientalist gaze as they re-imagine community in everyday practices and resistances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the first intensive academic research on the massacre of February 1983 near Nellie, a rural area in Assam, India. This incident saw the Tiwas, an ethnic group based on the Assam plains, attack the Bengali Muslims, who were immigrants, with about 1,600 people being killed. The context of the massacre was a movement by the dominant community against foreigners, especially East Pakistani and Bangladeshi immigrants, from 1979 to 1985. The framework of discussion is that nations construct their identities, at least to some extent, from violent episodes that see the subject attacked by the 'other'. The main part of the research method was on-the-spot interviewing, not to ascertain factual material but to find out the freely expressed views of people on memories and interpretations of the massacre, and specifically what had caused it. The paper argues that, in Assamese society the dominant narrative on the massacre was that of the Assamese intellectuals, while those of the minority groups were subordinate. The minority groups decided whether to establish their own historical identities largely on the basis of their choice whether to seek for autonomy or to assimilate with the dominant community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the ethnic movements of the Tamilnadu during the 1950s and 1960s, the Sikhs in Punjab during the 1980s, and the Muslims in Kashmir during the 1990s, with the focus at derivings some genaral conclusions. Periodic demands for more control and power by a variety of ethnic groups; Two Dimensions of the political context; Implications which concern normative and policy issues.

Over the last decade there has been increasing scholarly interest in the ethnic character of the Indian state. This interest has coincided with the rise of the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party [BJP], nation-wide clashes between Hindus and Muslims, and bitter conflict over affirmative action for backward classes. Simultaneously, the Indian state has been confronted by regional movements in Kashmir, Assam and Punjab seeking secession from the Indian Union. By focusing on the Punjab crisis this article argues that conventional explanations have concentrated on national political centralization and regional economic factors, to the neglect of Sikh ethno-nationalism and its dialectical relationship with strategies for ethnic conflict management followed by the Indian state since 1947. Drawing on recent revisionist accounts, the Indian state, it is suggested, should be viewed as a form of an ethnic democracy in which hegemonic control is exercised over non-Hindu ethnic groups. The Punjab case-study shows that hegemonic control has characterized the relationship between the Sikhs and the Indian state between 1947 and 1984, and efforts to re-establish hegemonic control after 1984 degenerated into violent control. The experience of the last ten years suggests that hegemonic control and violent control are unlikely to provide an enduring solution to the Punjab crisis. Rather, there is a need to address fundamentally the crisis of the Indian political system and how it has managed its minorities since 1947. Central to this reassessment is the viability of India's majoritarian political system in the context of an ethnically plural society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses postmodern literature on Hindu-Muslim conflict in India. Issues concerning the origins and spread of Hindu-Muslim antagonisms; Distinction between communal conflict and communal identity-formation; Arguments regarding the establishment of truth about the cause and effect of communal violence between Muslims and Hindus.