How does one understand or explain recurring, gruesome communal violence in India? Ward Berenschot, author of Riot Politics: Hindu-Muslim Violence and the Indian State, identifies six different approaches to the study of communal violence: Primordial (focus on the capacity of ethnicity to shape one’s perception of the world and one’s place in it), ideological (role of communal ideology in spreading hatred, instigating violence), instrumentalist (communal violence as a political strategy to serve the interests of elites), social-constructivist (communal identities and conflicts are not primordial but fluid and contingent, constructed by important individuals or groups in certain historical and political contexts), socio-psychological (riots occur because they serve various psychological needs of the rioters) and relational (focus on the changing patterns of intercommunal and intra-communal social interaction to explain recurring Hindu-Muslim conflict).

Though they all contain elements of truth, the various approaches provide only a partial understanding of the real nature of the beast, argues Berenschot; somewhat like the seven blind men holding on to different parts of the elephant in the room. He himself is a “relational” theorist with a difference. An exclusive focus on social interactions alone, he believes, obscures the critical role of political and state actors from the analysis.
Between January 2005 and March 2006, Berenschot did remarkable field work in Ahmedabad, living with his wife in three poor neighbourhoods: two of them among the most communally volatile in the city, the third (Ramrahim Nagar) an oasis of communal amity even during the state-sponsored programme of 2002. Observing from close quarters, engaging on a day-to-day basis in the social, cultural, civic, political life of the local communities, Berenschot accumulated rich ethnographic data, exposing the existence of “a fairly closely-knit network of municipal councillors, members of Legislative Assemblies, the police, party workers, activists of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and local neighbourhood leaders (including “social workers” and goondas), all involved in the planning, instigation and perpetration of violence (in 2002).” The book in particular addresses “the weaknesses in the available approaches in the literature that focus on political machinations as an explanation for occurrence of communal violence”. For the outbreak of violence, says Berenschot, “we need to link the motivations of the instigators (masterminds) with the motivations and interests of the instigated (perpetrators)”.
The book unravels this “link” in the “embedded nature” of the “mediated, everyday state,” a state which has control over resources to which the large majority of poor citizens have no direct access. Since resources are insufficient for universal access, enter the politician/political parties and their followers as intermediaries to facilitate access to insufficient resources to neighbourhoods on a selective basis. Politicians and ruling parties especially arm-twist bureaucrats in government and civic bodies to make resources available to those who are “us” while denying the same to “them”. At the same time, the subservient police force is used to extend protection and impunity to local political activists and criminals.
The book provides numerous graphic examples of how politicians engage with local communities on an everyday basis to cultivate and consolidate their electoral constituency. From his extensive engagement with ordinary people, Berenschot observes that come election time, the primary concern for voters is not the ideology, policy and programmes of different parties but simply the question of who will “benefit us.” “get our work done.”
To those who repeatedly assert there is nothing to differentiate between the Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party, Berenschot’s book should be an eye-opener. During the earlier period of successive Congress governments, class and caste were the basis of appeal and patronage. What greatly facilitated the growth of the BJP at the cost of the Congress since the 1980s was the collapse of the textile industry in Ahmedabad which earlier employed around 1.5 lakh workers and along with it the collapse of the Congress-affiliated Textile Labour Association (TLA), leading to large number of workers being pushed into the “informal sector” and the vulnerabilities and insecurities that go with it. In this uncertain environment, the BJP and its affiliates in the Sangh Parivar assiduously cultivated the Hindu vs Muslim divide to build their alternate patronage network.
Other scholars studying the problem of communal violence in India have noted the existence of “institutionalised riot systems” or “riot networks.” The merit of Berenschot’s book lies in vividly demonstrating how the patronage networks of a communal party function simultaneously as riot networks: “Gujarat could not have become the ‘laboratory of Hindutva’ had it not been for the capacity of Hindu-nationalist organisations to develop a firm grip on Gujarat’s state institutions. The RSS, the VHP and the BJP and their many affiliates, have become entrenched in Gujarat’s most important institutions — universities, farmer co-operatives, government institutions, the press etc — as well as in Gujarat’s social life”. If Ramrahim Nagar stayed calm while hell was let loose elsewhere in Ahmedabad in 2002, it was only because its Muslims and dalits have remained united for decades and have learnt to access resources for collective benefit.