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Abstract
Matters of war and violence continue to prove seductive foci for geographical analysis, whereas the concept of peace has remained undertheorized, more often constructed in negative terms as the absence of violence. This article responds to calls within the academy and beyond for a more critical look at the geographies of peace, through an examination of everyday peace between “Hindu traders” and “Muslim weavers” in urban north India. Building on qualitative field research conducted between 2006 and 2008 in the silk sari industry in eastern Uttar Pradesh, the primary focus is on the lived realities of Muslim weaver subalterns. It shows how everyday peace is socially produced and reproduced through the interactive work of practice and narrative, which is embedded within a particular cultural political economy and intimately linked to local structures of power and politics. In the context of these intercommunity work relations, peace can be conceptualized as a by-product of interdependent economic relations, simultaneously constituting the conditions for its reproduction. For Muslim weavers who are more often marginalized within these economic spaces, learning, pragmatism, and resilience informed their actions to rework existing patterns of power without jeopardizing the future of everyday intercommunity peace. Illustrating the generative potential of peace, this article reinforces the need for further research into the seemingly empty expanses of social life that appear after or without politics.
Las cosas de la guerra y la violencia se mantienen como focos seductores para el análisis geográfico, en tanto que el propio concepto de paz ha permanecido poco teorizado, más a menudo construido en términos negativos, como la condición de ausencia de violencia. Este artículo es una respuesta a los llamados que se hacen en el mundo académico y en otras partes por una mirada más crítica a las geografías de la paz, respuesta buscada a través del examen de la paz cotidiana que existe entre “comerciantes hindú” y “tejedores musulmanes” en el norte urbano de la India. Construyendo a partir de la investigación cualitativa de campo conducida entre el 2006 y el 2008 en la industria del sari de seda, en la parte oriental de Uttar Pradesh, el foco primario del que nos ocupamos son las realidades vividas por los tejedores subalternos musulmanes. Se muestra cómo la paz cotidiana es socialmente producida y reproducida por medio del trabajo interactivo de práctica y narrativa, incrustado dentro de una particular economía política cultural e íntimamente ligado a las estructuras locales de poder y política. En el contexto de estas relaciones de trabajo intercomunitario, la paz puede conceptualizarse como un subproducto de relaciones económicas interdependientes, que simultáneamente constituye las condiciones para su reproducción. Para los tejedores musulmanes, que más a menudo son marginalizados en estos espacios económicos, el aprendizaje, el pragmatismo y la resiliencia informaban sus acciones para volver sobre el trabajo de patrones existentes de poder sin hacer peligrar el futuro de la paz cotidiana intercomunitaria. Al ilustrar el potencial generativo de la paz, este artículo refuerza la necesidad de mayor investigación en las aparentemente vacías vastedades de la vida social que aparecen después de la política, o sin ésta.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Economic and Social Research Council, UK, who funded the doctoral research on which this article is based and to the British Academy for funding additional research. My deepest thanks also extend to my research assistant, Ajay Pandey; Vinay Sharma for the use of his photographs in this article; and friends and informants in Varanasi who were central to the production of this research. I wish to thank Bhaskar Vira, Delwar Hussain, Craig Jeffrey, Gerry Kearns, and Fiona McConnell for their helpful feedback on previous versions of this article, the three anonymous referees for their comments and critique, and the journal editor.
Notes
1. Connected acts of violence forming a wider incidence of collective violence. On the term riot in the South Asian context, see Tambiah (Citation1996).
2. To protect the identity of my informants I have used pseudonyms; however, place names remain the same.
3. For example, on the riots in Ayodhya (1991–1992) see van der Veer (1994); in Mumbai (1993) see Hansen (1999, 2001); and on the Gujarat riots (2002) see Varadarajan (Citation2002).
4. Geography does continue, however, to play a role in facilitating war (see Kearns Citation2010).
5. For a popular critique concerning our preoccupation with violence rather than nonviolence, see Kurlansky (Citation2006).
6. These critiques have also been leveled at the concept of social capital (e.g., Fine Citation1999; Radcliffe Citation2004) on which Putnam's theories of “bridging” and “bonding” relations rest.
7. In the Indian context, the term subaltern speaks to a long tradition of scholarship spawned by the Subaltern Studies Collective (including, among others, Ranajit Guha, Partha Chatterjee, Dipesh Chakrabarty, and Gyan Prakash). Their primary concern was to construct a history from below that gave voice to the powerless masses.
8. The proportion of religious communities to total national population at the 2001 Government of India Census were as follows: Hindus, 80.5 percent; Muslims, 13.4 percent; Christians, 2.3 percent; Sikhs, 1.9 percent; Buddhists, 0.8 percent; and Jains, 0.4 percent.
9. But such credentials have not brought UP the type of development and prosperity experienced elsewhere in India (e.g., Gujarat, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, and Andhra Pradesh). In 2000, an estimated 31 percent of its population lived in poverty compared to the national average of 26 percent (World Bank 2006). UP's primary industry is agriculture; other main industries have traditionally included aluminium smelting, production of edible oils, leather works, cement, chemicals, textiles, and glass and bangles.
10. Also known as Banaras, Benares, and Kashi, among other names (see Eck Citation1983).
11. Brahmins are high-caste Hindus, traditionally the priests in society. In the caste classification system, this also includes Kshatriyas (warriors), Vaisyas (farmers), and Shudras (laborers). For an examination of caste see Dumont (Citation1980), and on how the significance of caste has shifted in recent years see Corbridge, Harriss, and Jeffrey (forthcoming).
12. Compared with other cities in UP such as Meerut, Moradabad, Allahabad, Aligarh, and Ayodhya.
13. See Jeffrey (2010b, 42) for a discussion on bhaichārā as a practice of collective and equitable land tenure and cultivation by Jat farmers in northeastern UP around the mid-nineteenth century.
14. For a very good discussion on theorizing friendship see Dyson (Citation2010).
15. This equates to primary school education up to eight and nine years of age.
16. Gooptu (2001, 261) reports that Muslim Ansaris were regarded as a menace to the peace, health, and prosperity of early twentieth-century Varanasi.