Bandh politics: crowds, spectacular violence, and sovereignty in India

ABSTRACT

In 2002, in Gujarat, India, the Hindu nationalist organization, VHP (World Hindu Council), called for a state-wide bandh – a shutdown of shops, offices, businesses, and transportation – to protest the death of Hindu activists by a Muslim mob. During the state-endorsed bandh, Hindu activists and the wider public, supported by the police and politicians, attacked Muslims with impunity. While the ruling Hindu nationalist regime claimed that the violence was spontaneous rioting, activists and survivors emphasized the organized nature of the massacre. If crowds are understood as a performative, and not simply a political tool, then the bandh is a form of political drama when crowds perform claims to sovereignty. Bandh politics entangle multiple audiences, anticipate public violence, invite participation from state and non-state actors, and symbolize popular sovereignty. Bandh politics transformed state-backed public violence against Muslims in 2002 into a mass protest that enabled new forms of solidarity between the Hindu nationalist regime, state officials, and the wider public. Bandh politics is neither instrumental nor spontaneous, but more like a wager that enables political actors to seize, stage, and frame crowd violence as the will of the people.

KEYWORDS:

• Crowds
• ethnic and religious violence
• India
• Gujarat
• bandh
• sovereignty

Acknowledgements

I am indebted to Ajay Gandhi for pushing me to think more creatively about crowd politics. I want to thank Reza Masoudi for inviting me to contribute to this special issue, and for the comments of the anonymous reviewers at Distinktion. I am grateful to S.P. Harish, Manuel Balan, Kate Bersch, Hemangini Gupta, Poulami Roychowdhury, and Weeda Mehran for their insightful comments and suggestions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Moyukh Chatterjee is an anthropologist and Postdoctoral Fellow in Global Governance at the Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University. His research focuses on political violence, legitimacy and state formation.

Notes

1 Two government inquiries came to contradictory conclusions on the cause of the fire that killed the Hindu activists. In 2005, an Indian railways investigation found that the train burning was due to an ‘accidental fire’. In 2008, a commission of inquiry appointed by the Gujarat Government concluded that the train burning was a ‘planned conspiracy’.

2 This case was one of several grievous cases monitored by the Supreme Court of India through a Special Investigation Team (SIT). The widow of the politician, Mrs Zakia Jafri, accused the then Chief Minister of Gujarat and current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi and 62 other high-ranking state officials of conspiracy and abetment in the massacre of her husband and other Muslim residents of Gulberg society in Ahmedabad. The SIT found there was ‘no prosecutable evidence’ against the Chief Minister and other politicians and closed the case in 2012. Mrs Jafri challenged the closure of the case and appealed the decision in 2013. In December 2013, a lower court in Ahmedabad agreed with the SIT and accepted its closure report.

3 ‘When Guardians of Gujarat gave 24-hour license for punitive action’, Sujan Datta, The Telegraph. Accessed via http://www.milligazette.com/dailyupdate/200203/20020311b.htm

4 Manas Dasgupta, ‘140 killed as Gujarat bandh turns violent’. See http://www.thehindu.com/2002/03/01/stories/2002030103030100.htm

5 Ghassem-Fachandi (2012, 39).

6 ‘It Had to be Done, VHP Leader Says of Riots’, rediff.com, 12 March 2002.

7 ‘Safronized police show their colour’, the hindu.com, http://www.thehindu.com/2002/03/03/stories/2002030303170800.htm, 3rd March 2002.

8 See Varadarajan (2002).

Additional information

Funding

My fieldwork in Gujarat was funded by the Wenner-Gren foundation and supported by Kishorebhai, Harsh, Johanna, and Prita. The writing of this article was supported by the Program in Global Governance, funded by the Erin Jellel Collins Arsenault Trust, at the Institute for the Study of International Development, McGill University.