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).

Rs 350

Javed Anand

In the past two decades or so, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the sangh parivar as a whole and its ideological affiliates have frequently been dubbed as “fascist forces”. Protagonists of Hindutva denounce the claim as “malicious canard”. Citing the Emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, they argue that the real enemy of Indian democracy is the Congress Party.

So what do you do when you are only 12 years old in a foreign land faced with classmates who do not want to sit anywhere close to you, a “smelly Paki” with a horrible disease called BO? Be smart; approach the issue “rationally”. You know from TV commercials there is a soap called Lifebuoy that “kills the bacteria that cause BO”.

Jamal Khwaja clearly is his father’s son. Maulana Mohammed Ali Jowhar, the leading light of the Khilafat Movement — which Gandhiji supported in the hope of building Hindu-Muslim amity and a united struggle for freedom — is supposed to have once said that “even the most degraded Muhammadan was better than Gandhi.”

Rs 499

Javed Anand

The Conclusions chapter of the book opens on an alarming, ominous note: “It is easy to think of the prospects of the Indian Muslims in gloomy terms. Long ago denied the sceptre, which many thought essential to their existence, and now suspected by many for their religion and regarded as second-class citizens, is there any future for them other than eventual absorption in the Hindu mass?

By Dilip D’Souza

Rs 250

Javed Anand

First, if you’ve not seen it already, go find the recent issue of a national weekly which has “The Silent Killers of Chhattisgarh” as its cover story. It’s not the story that I’m talking about but the picture on the cover for it has many stories to tell.

By Tabish Khair

Rs 450

Caught between Islamist terrorism on one hand and “war on terror”, or Islamophobia, on the other, what do Muslims do? If you happen to possess the literary class of Pakistan’s Mohsin Hamid or our very own Tabish Khair, you know.

By Farrukh Dhondy

Rs 299

Different strokes for different folks. America’s 9/11 did different things to different Americans. George Bush responded to it with his “war on terror’, that he called a “just war”. But within days of the Al Qaeda’s attack, in Islam’s name, on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, USA Today also reported that the Quran was fast becoming the bestselling book in the country.