1st Edition
Genocides and Xenophobia in South Asia and Beyond A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Known, Lesser-known and Unknown Crime of Crimes
This volume foregrounds some of the unknown or lesser-known incidents of xenophobia and genocide from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Africa, and Rwanda. It critically analyses the cultural and structural contexts triggering these various forms of genocides and xenophobia, and situates them within modern histories of violence and human tribulations. The book discusses various non-Western case studies, which include the communal violence incited by anti-CAA protests in Delhi; the expulsion and displacement of Kashmiri Pandits; xenophobic attitudes against illegal immigrants in Assam; genocide in Sylhet during the Liberation War of Bangladesh; the 1994 genocide in Rwanda; and incidences of human rights violations across the world.
A comprehensive and transdisciplinary text, the book will be useful for students and researchers of human geography, sociology, political science, social work, anthropology, colonialism and postcolonialism, nationalism, imperialism, human rights, and history.
List of Figures
List of Tables
Foreword
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
1 Understanding Xenophobia and Genocide
RITUPARNA BHATTACHARYYA
2 Nationalisms On(the)line: New Media and the Fanning of Fear and Xenophobia
APARAJITA DE AND VIVEK TRIPATHI
3 The Alchemy of a Sectarian Riot: New Delhi, 2020
AJOY ASHIRWAD MAHAPRASHASTA
4 Genocide of Kashmiri Pandits
KULBHUSHAN WARIKOO
5 Narratives, Violence and Consent: The Normalisation of State Violence in Jammu and Kashmir
DEVIKA MITTAL
6 Communal Riot, Pogrom, or Genocide? Framing and Naming the Anti-Sikh Violence of Delhi 1984
SILVIA TIERI
7 Is Assam Under the Shackle of a Silent Genocide?
RITUPARNA BHATTACHARYYA AND PRANJIT KUMAR SARMA
8 ‘Recovering Violent Pasts’: Revisiting moments of Xenophobic Violence and Uprooting from Partitioned North-East India
BINAYAK DUTTA
9 Genocide in Sylhet during the Liberation War of Bangladesh
TULSHI KUMAR DAS AND MOHAMMAD JAHIRUL HOQUE
10 Ethnic Violence in Sri Lanka: Politics of Sinhala- Tamil Tensions
ROSHNI KAPUR AND AMIT RANJAN
11 Xenophobia in South Africa: Can this Morph into Genocide?
BRIJ MAHARAJ AND STEVEN LAWRENCE GORDON
12 1994 Rwanda Holocaust: A Critical Analysis of Xenophobia Mutating to Genocide against the Tutsi
RITUPARNA BHATTACHARYYA, VENKAT RAO PULLA, CHARLES KALINGANIRE, AND GASPARD RWANYIZIRI
Index
Biography
Rituparna Bhattacharyya holds a PhD from the School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, University of Newcastle, UK. She is a senior fellow at Advance HE (formerly Higher Education Academy), UK, and an adjunct professor at Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, India. She also works as a research consultant and editor-in-chief (Joint) of the journal Space and Culture, India. She does volunteer work at the Prag Foundation for Capacity Building, a public charitable trust in India, and the Alliance for Community Capacity Building for North East India, a UK-registered charity. She has more than 65 publications to her credit with international publishing houses. Her latest book is Bhattacharyya, R. (2023). North East India Through the Ages: A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Prehistory, History, and Oral History. London and New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis.
"Across geographies of time and space, including India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, South Africa and Rwanda, the authors reveal how past and present coalesce in powerful and complex ways to manifest in the atrocities of xenophobia and genocide. While the world’s eye is on the Russian-Ukrainian war, with the accompanying genocide in Ukraine, the book is a stark reminder of the fragility of peace, the all too easy negation of the “never again” promise, and of humanity’s unfortunate propensity to decompensate into a brutalizing inhumanity. Against this background is Rwanda’s story of reconciliation, rebuilding and hope that the world might draw lessons from. A must read for anyone with a moral impulse towards an undivided and a more peaceful world!"
Dr. Vishanthie Sewpaul, Emeritus Professor, University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN), South Africa, Professor ii, University of Stavanger, Norway
"Xenophobia and Genocide are contentious notions in the wider landscape of mass atrocities and violence. Xenophobia and Genocide in South Asia and Beyond is a provocative collection of substantive and innovative essays on understudied issues that intersect between violence, power, and prejudices in South Asia and beyond. The contributors to the volume use lesser known and some popular case studies across spatial landscapes to present a critical narrative of existing and emerging mass atrocities. In the process, these scholars critically re-examine and provide innovative analyses of the conceptual notions of Xenophobia and Genocide even as they consider established institutional perspectives. The essays brilliantly challenge our existing notions of atrocities and violence and stimulate our understanding of the same. To that end, the book is a necessary read for students, researchers, and practitioners who wish to become familiar with the critical attributes of violence (emerging from economic effects of debt, fiscal deficits, capital flows, international trade, militarization, and globalization) as it manipulates consent and challenges democratic norms in places."
Dr Rajiv Thakur, Associate Professor of Geography, Missouri State University, West Plains and AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellow - USAID
"This is a wonderful collection of thought-provoking eleven chapters, discussing very relevant and timely needed topics. It will prove to be a significant contribution to the critical understanding of the cases of Xenophobia and Genocide in five countries. The book will be handy and highly useful for the academic community."
Dr Subhash Anand, Professor, Department of Geography, Delhi School of Economics, University of Delhi, Delhi - 110007, India.
