Image from Google Jackets

Archives as the Infrastructure of Anti-Muslim Violence in India

By: Material type: TextTextPublication details: Contributions to Indian Sociology; 2023Description: 251-275ISSN:
  • 0069-9659
Subject(s): Online resources: Summary: Through a reading of over 100 police First Information Reports (FIR) of the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, I suggest a compositional approach to legal archives of violence that goes beyond the binaries of absence/presence and success/failure in the court of law. Such an approach focuses on forms-repetition, aggregation and trace-that lie on the surface of police documents. Focusing on what is aggregated, repeated and even left blank, this article describes how archives comprise the infrastructure of anti-minority violence in India. I describe how police archives attach themselves to colonial categories of the riot, transform public attacks against Muslims into spontaneous outbursts of 'Hindu anger' and produce a space-time when collective violence against minorities becomes natural destruction: anonymous violence without agency or legal culpability.
Tags from this library: No tags from this library for this title. Log in to add tags.
Star ratings
    Average rating: 0.0 (0 votes)
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number Vol info Status Date due Barcode
Article Index Article Index Dr VKRV Rao Library Vol. 57, No. 3 Not for loan AI511

Through a reading of over 100 police First Information Reports (FIR) of the anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat in 2002, I suggest a compositional approach to legal archives of violence that goes beyond the binaries of absence/presence and success/failure in the court of law. Such an approach focuses on forms-repetition, aggregation and trace-that lie on the surface of police documents. Focusing on what is aggregated, repeated and even left blank, this article describes how archives comprise the infrastructure of anti-minority violence in India. I describe how police archives attach themselves to colonial categories of the riot, transform public attacks against Muslims into spontaneous outbursts of 'Hindu anger' and produce a space-time when collective violence against minorities becomes natural destruction: anonymous violence without agency or legal culpability.

There are no comments on this title.

to post a comment.

Powered by Koha