Colours of Violence

by Kakar, Sudhir

  References

  Chapter One

  1. In the profession of this belief, physicists did not limit themselves to the field of natural science. In his 1929 lecture, ‘Light and Life’, Nils Bohr made an explicit analogy between quantum mechanics and psychology when he observed that the necessity of considering the interrelationship between the measuring instrument and the object of inquiry in physics paralleled the difficulty in psychology where the content of consciousness changed as soon as attention was directed to it; see Nils Bohr, ‘Light and Life’, Nature 131 (1933), 421–33 and 457–59.

  Wolfgang Pauli, who is regarded by many as occupying a place next only to Einstein in the hierarchy of the great modern physicists, was categorical in his conclusion that the natural sciences had taken a historically wrong turn by accepting Cartesian ideas and ways of thought engendered by Newtonian physics. The observer in modern physics, he felt, was still too separated from the phenomena observed. In so far as a content of consciousness was itself an observation, the vital question of separation of subject and object was not restricted to the narrow field of physical inquiry but was relevant for all human sciences too; Pauli, ‘Phänomen und physikalische Realität’, Dialektika 17 (1957), 36–48.

  2. For a history of the city, see S. M. Alam, The Growth of Hyderabad City—A Historical Perspective, (Hyderabad: Azad Oriental Research Institute, 1986); D. Prasad, Social and Cultural Geography of Hyderabad City (New Delhi: Inter-India Publications, 1986).

  3. Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, Travels in India, trans. V. Ball, ed. W. Crooke (1676; Delhi: Oriental Books, 1977), 122–24.

  4. S. C. Dube, Indian Village (New York: Harper Collophon Books, 1967), 187.

  5. Francois Martin, Memoirs of François Martin (1670-1694), trans. L. Vardarajan, vol. 1, p. 2 (Delhi: Manohar, 1983), 761–62.

  6. Ibid.

  7. Tavernier, 127.

  8. Ratna Naidu, Old Cities, New Predicaments: A Study of Hyderabad (Delhi: Sage, 1991), 15.

  9. Tavernier, 140.

  10. Muzaffar Alam, Competition and Co-existence: Indo-Islamic Interaction in Medieval North India’, Itinerario 13, no. 1 (1989), 51.

  11. Naidu, Chap. 5.

  12. The secularist view has been articulated in a host of academic and popular publications for over fifty years. Its most sophisticated proponents are a group of historians at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. For an older formulation of the view, Nehru’s The Discovery of India is still one of the best introductions. For a recent summary, see Amartya Sen, ‘The Threats to Secular India’, New York Review of Books, 8 April 1993, 26–32. For the viewpoints of the activists, see Mehdi Arslam and Janaki Rajan, eds., Communalism in India : Challenge and Response (Delhi: Manohar, 1994).

  13. C. A. Bayly, The Pre-history of “communalism”? Religious Conflict in India 1700–1860’, Asian Studies 19, no. 2 (1985), 184–85.

  14. This view is most forcefully advocated by Marxist and neo-Marxist historians. See, e.g., Gyanendra Pandey, The Colonial Construction of Communalism in North India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990).

  15. For some of the more recent versions of the Hindu nationalist viewpoint see Koenraad Elst, Ayodhya and After: Issues before Hindu Society (Delhi: Voice of India, 1991); K. D. Prithipaul, ‘Reason, Law and the Limits of Indian Secularism’, International Journal of Indian Studies, July–December 1992.

  16. Marc Gaborieau, ‘From Al-Beruni to Jinnah’, Anthropology Today 1, no. 3 (1985).

  17. See, e.g., Tara Chand, Influence of Islam on Indian Culture (Allahabad: The Indian Press, 1963). For more recent formulations see Rasheeduddin Khan, ed., Composite Culture of India and National Integration (Simla: IIAS, 1988). See also Gyanendra Pandey, ed., Hindus and Others (Delhi: Viking, 1993).

  18. Bayly, op. cit.

  19. Alam, 46. See also his, ‘Assimilation from a Distance: Confrontation and a Sufi Accommodation in Awadh society’, unpublished manuscript, Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, 1992.

  20. Ibid., 51.

  21. Ibid., 55.

  22. Abbé J. Dubois, Hindu Manners, Customs and Ceremonies, ed. and trans. H. K. Beauchamp (1906; Calcutta: Rupa, 1992), 48.

  23. François Bemier, Travels in the Mogul Empire (1656–1668) (New Delhi: S. Chand, 1972), 33.

  24. Dubois, 134.

  25. Erik Erikson, Toys and Reasons (New York: Norton, 1977).

  26. Bayly, 192–95.

  27. Dubois, 341–42. The Hindus constancy to their faith in the face of Muslim oppression or blandishments is also attested to hold true in the case of north India by Alam, 48–49.

  28. Ibid., 343.

  29. Raymond Grew, On the Prospect of Global History’, unpublished manuscript for the Conference on Global History at Bellagio, Italy, July 16–21 1991.

  30. Ian Austin, City of Legends: The Story of Hyderabad (Delhi: Viking, 1991).

  Chapter Two

  1. Peter Marsh, ‘Rhetorics of Violence’ in P. Marsh and A. Campbell, eds., Aggression and Violence (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1982), 102-17.

  2. See Larry Byron et al, ‘Legitimate Violence, Violence Attitudes, and Rape: A Test of the Cultural Spillover Theory’, in R. Prentky and V.L. Quinsey, eds.,_Human Sexual Aggression: Current Perspectives, Annals of New York Academy of Sciences, vol. 528 (New York: New York Academy of Sciences, 1988), 80–85.

  3. Erik Erikson, Identity: Youth and Crisis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968).

  4. See Rita R. Rogers, ‘Intergenerational Exchange: Transference of Attitudes down the Generations’, in J. Howells, ed., Modern Perspectives in the Psychiatry of Infancy (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1979), 339–49.

  5. Bert N. Adams and M. Bristow, ‘Ugandan Asian Expulsion Experiences: Rumor and Reality’, Journal of Asian and African Studies 14(1979), 191–203.

  6. Ralph L. Rosnow, ‘Rumor as Communication: A Contextualist Approach’, Journal of Communication 38, no. 1 (1988), 12–28.

  7. Krishna Baldev Vaid, Guzra hua Zamana (Delhi: Radhakrishna, 1982), 430–36; my translation.

  8. Asghar Ali Engineer, Communal Riots in Post-Independence India (New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1985).

  9. Eric Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism since 1870 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  10. Ashutosh Varshney, ‘Contested Meanings: India’s National Identity, Hindu Nationalism and the Politics of Anxiety’, Daedalus 122, no. 3 (1993), 227–61. See also Ainslee T. Embree, Utopias in Conflict: Religion and Nationalism in Modern India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1990).

  11. Varshney, 238.

  12. Howard Schuman and J. Scott, ‘Generations and Collective Memories’, American Sociological Review 54 (1989), 380.

  13. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).

  14. See John C. Turner, ‘ Towards a Cognitive Re-definition of the Social Group’, in Henri Tajfel, ed., Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982); and Tajfel, ‘ Social Psychology of Intergroup Relations,’ in W. G. Austin and S. Worchel, eds., Annual Review of Psychology, vol. 33, 1982.

  15. Vamik D. Volkan, ‘An overview of psychological concepts’, in V. Volkan et al, eds.The Psychodynamics of International Relationships (Lexington: Lexington Books, 1990), 31–46.

  16. Howard Stein, On Professional Allegiance in the Study of Politics’, Political Psychology 7 (1986), 248. See also John Mack, ‘The enemy system’ in Volkan, The Psychodynamics of International Relationships, 57-89. Wendy Doniger (personal communication) illustrates this dual nature of certain objects, places, people, by citing the Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai who intervened in an argument over whether Jerusalem is a symbol or a real city inhabited by real people, with the remark that Jerusalem is a symbol—but a symbol with a sewage system.

  17. Sigmund Freud, ‘The taboo of virginity’ (1918), in The Standard Edition of the Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1957), 11, 191-208.

  18. See Natalie Z. Da
vis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987), 152–88.

  19. Ikram Ali Malik, Hindu–Muslim Riots in the British Punjab (1849–1900) (Lahore: Gosha-i-adab, 1984), 3–5. See also Sandra Freitag, Collective Action and Community: Public Arenas and the Emergence of Communalism in North India, (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990). For an account of the more recent riots, see M. J. Akbar, Riot after Riot (New Delhi: Penguin Books, 1988).

  20. Sarah J. Moore, Rioting in Northern India (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1976), 53.

  21. Phyllis Greenacre, ‘Crowds and Crisis’, The Psychoanalytical Study of the Child 27 (1972), 147.

  22. See Stephen Reicher, ‘The Determination of Collective Behavior’, in Tajfel, Social Identity and Intergroup Relations, 40-82.

  23 Moore, 62.

  24. Javed Alam, ‘Riots and Recent Phase of Communal Violence in Hyderabad’, Bulletin Henry Martin Institue of Islamic Studies, Jan–March 1994.

  25. Davis shows this to be one of the implicit motivations of a crowd in the case of Catholic and Protestant violence in sixteenth-century France.

  26. Romesh C. Majumdar et aL, eds., The History and Culture of the Indian People, vol. 5 (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhawan, 1964), 22.

  27. Volkan, ‘An Overview of Psychological Concepts’, 44.

  28. Cited in Javed Alam, ‘Tradition in India under Interpreted Stress: Integrating its claims’, Theses Eleven, 39, 1994.

  Chapter Three

  1. Dieter Beckman, E. Brahler, and H. E. Richter, Der dessen Test, 4th ed. (Bern: Verlag Hans Huber, 1991).

  2. Samuel J. Klausner, ‘Violence’, in Mircea Eliade, ed., The Encyclopedia of Religion 15, 268–71.

  3. Joseph S. Alter, The Wrestler’s Body: Identity and Ideology in North India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992). Much of the information on the wrestler’s physical regimen and ethical attitudes is derived from this excellent study.

  4. J. S. Alter, ‘The Sanyasi and the Indian Wrestler: The Anatomy of a Relationship’, American Ethnologist 16, no. 2 (1992), 317–36.

  5. Ibid., 326.

  6. K.P. Singh, ‘Swasth Vibhagon par Kharch Bar Raha Hai, aur Nai Nai Bimariyan bhi Bar Rahi hain’, Bhartiya Kushti 17 (1980), 21; cited in J. S. Alter, ‘The Body of One Colour: Indian Westling, the Indian State, and Utopian Somatics’, Cultural Anthropology, no. 1 (1993), 64.

  7. For an elaboration of this viewpoint, see R. Gladston, ‘The Longest Pleasure: A Psychoanalytic Study of Hatred’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis 68 (1987), 371–78.

  Chapter Four

  1. M. N. Srinivas, Social Change in Modern India (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966).

  2. Napoleon Chagnon, Yanomamo: The Fierce People (Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1983).

  3. Sudhir Kakar, The Inner World: A Psychoanalytic Study of Childhood and Society in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978), chap. 3.

  4. Christopher Bollas, ‘Generational Consciousness’, in Being a Character: Psychoanalysis and Self Experience (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992).

  5. For a comprehensive discussion of the theory and its problems, see Thomas F. Pettigrew, ‘The Intergroup Hypothesis Reconsidered’, in M. Hewston and R. Brown, eds, Contact and Conflict in Intergroup Encounters (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), 169–95.

  6. David Lowenthal, ‘The Timeless Past: Some Anglo-American Historical Preconceptions’, Journal of American History 75 (1989), 1263–280.

  7. Dube, 187.

  8. Dubois, 218.

  9. Owen Berkeley-Hill, ‘Hindu–Muslim Unity’, in International Journal of Psychoanalysis 6 (1925), 287.

  10. Ibid., 287.

  11. Sudhir Kakar, Shamans, Mystics and Doctors (New York: A. Knopf, 1982), chap. 3.

  12. Robert A. Le Vine and Donald T. Campbell, Ethnocentrism: Theories of Conflict, Ethnic Attitudes and Group Behavior (New York: John Wiley, 1972).

  13. See A. Majeed and E. S. K. Ghosh, ‘A Study of Social Identity in Three Ethnic Groups in India,’ International Journal of Psychology 17 (1982), 455–63.

  14. Erik Erikson, ‘Womanhood and Inner Space’ in Identity: Youth and Crisis.

  15. The relevant studies are: A. Sharma and S. Anandlakshmy, ‘Prejudice in the Making: Understanding the role of socialization’, in D. Sinha, ed., Socialization of the Indian Child (New Delhi: Concept, 1981), 101. A. K. Singh, ‘Development of Religious Identity and Prejudice in Indian Children’, in A. deSouza, ed., Children in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 1979), 231–44. Other studies have shown a significant correlation between the parents’ prejudice and that of children, with female children tending to be more influenced by the mother’s prejudices, and the fathers of prejudiced boys being significantly more authoritarian: See M. K. Hasan, ‘Child-rearing Attitudes and Some Personality Traits of the Parents of Prejudiced School Children’, Manas 24, no. 3 (1977), 1–10, and ‘Parental Influence on Children’s prejudice’, Social Change 13, no. 2 (1983), 40-46. For an overview of similar studies from all over the world in the case of ethnic groups, see Nimmi Hutnick, Ethnic Minority Identity; (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991).

  16. Luce Irigaray, Je, Tu, Nous, Pour Une Culture de la Difference (Paris: Biblio-Poche, 1994).

  Chapter Five

  1. Anees Jung, Night of the New Moon: Encounters with Muslim Women in India (Delhi: Penguin, 1993), 59.

  2. Rollo May, Power and innocence (New York: Dell, 1972), 29.

  3. Bernard Lewis, The Political Language of Islam (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988), 4.

  4. R.D. Meade and L. Singh, ‘Changes in Social Distance during Warfare: A Study of India/Pakistan War of 1971’, Journal of Social Psychology 90, no. 2 (1973), 325–26.

  5. For an interesting description of the behaviour of various kinds of victims, see R. A. Ball, ‘The Victimological Cycle’, Victimology 1, no. 3 (1976), 379‘95.

  6. Mushirul Hasan, ‘Minority Identity and Its Discontents: Responses and Representations’, Paper read at International congress of Asian Studies, Hong Kong, August, 1993.

  7. Akbar S. Ahmed, Discovering Islam (New Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1990), 158‘60. See also Imtiaz Ahmed, ed., Modernization and Social Change among Muslims (Delhi: Manohar, 1983).

  8. Gilani Bano, Aiwan-e-ghazal (Hyderabad, 1976).

  9. See R. A. Shweder, M. Mahapatra and J. G. Miller, ‘Culture and Moral Development’, in J. Kagan and S. Lamb, eds., The Emergence of Moral Concepts in Early Childhood (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987); R. A. Shweder, ‘Beyond Self-constructed Knowledge: The Study of Culture and Morality’, in Merril-Palmer Quarterly 28 (1982), 41–69; R. A. Shweder and N. C. Much, ‘Determinants of Meaning: Discourse and moral socialization’, in R. A. Shweder, Thinking through Cultures (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).

  10. R. Dworkin, Taking Rights Seriously (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977).

  11. E. Fromm, Psychoanalysis and Religion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1950); G. Obeyesekere, Medusa’s Hair (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981).

  12. Kakar, The Inner World, 37.

  13. A. K. Ramanujan, ‘Is There an Indian Way of Thinking?’ in M. Marriott, ed., India through Hindu Categories (Delhi: Sage Publications, 1990).

  14. For an elaboration on the uses of empathy see Rafael Moses, ‘Empathy and Disempathy in the Political Process’, Political Psychology 5 (1985), 135–40.

  Chapter Six

  1. Kakar, The Inner World.

  2. Anthony Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986).

  3. For a similarity in the Islamic world, see Bassam Tibi, The Crisis of Modern Islam (Salt Lake City: Utah University Press, 1988).

  4. For brief biographies of the first and second RSS ‘supremos’, see Walter V. Andersen and S. Damle, The Brotherhood in Saffron (Delhi: Vistaar Publications, 1987).

  5. The social-psychological effects of modernization have been discussed in E. James Anthony an
d C. Chiland, eds., The Child in His Family: Children and Their Parents in a Changing World (New York: John Wiley, 1978).

  6. Quoted from a sangh parivar journal in an article, ‘Woman of Saffron’, in The Times of India, February 1993.

  7. See Tu Wei-Ming, ‘Beyond the Enlightenment Mentality’, unpublished paper given at the Second International Conference on Global History at Technical University, Darmstadt, Germany (July 1992), 4.

  8. Erik H. Erikson, Insight and Responsibility (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964).

  9. Sigmund Freud, ‘Group psychology and the analysis of the ego’ (1921), Standard Edition, vol. 18.

  10. Ernest Wolf, Treating the Self(New York: Guilford Press, 1988), 48.

  11. Asghar Ali Engineer, ed., Communal Riots in Post-independence India, (New Delhi: Sangam Books, 1985), 238–71.

  12. Paul Brass, Ethnicity and Nationalism (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991), 15.

  13. See Peter Homans, The Ability to Mourn (Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 1991), 309.

  14. The clearest description of the concept of complementarity is by Klaus Meyer-Habich; see his ‘Komplementarität’, in J. Ritter and K. Gruender, eds., Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie (Basel: Schwaber, 1967), 4, 933–34.

  15. Don Miller, The Reason of Metaphor (Delhi: Sage Publications, 1991), 169.

  16. For Rithambra’s biographical details, see ‘Virtuous Virago’, The Times of India, 19 July 1991 and ‘Hindutava by the Blood of Her Words’, The Daily, 9 June 1991.

  17. On the poetic function of rhetoric, see John Shotter, ‘The social construction of remembering and forgetting’, in D. Middleton and D. Edwards, eds., Collective Remembering (London: Sage, 1990), 124.

  18. Homans, 277.

  19. Rafael Moses, ‘The Group Self and the Arab-Israeli conflict’, International Review of Psychoanalysis 9 (1982), 56.