Fired by the spirit of Holi, one night in 1713, the banker Hariram lit a great bonfire on the street in front of his home. His neighbour, a Muslim, complained; the bonfire, he argued, was a dangerous nuisance. The local governor, also Muslim, sided with the banker.
The next day, irate Muslims slaughtered a cow on the same street. Fighting followed, and a young Muslim was killed. Backed by the governor’s Afghan mercenaries, mobs pillaged Hindu neighbourhoods, killing as they went.
This week, as India counts the costs of last week’s savage communal violence in its capital—estimated at a staggering Rs 25,000 crore by the Delhi Chamber of Commerce—it’s easy to see how little some things have changed little in three centuries. From India’s medieval past, though, it’s also clear there are other kinds of models of communal relationships. Even as Ahmedabad exploded in 1713, the port cities of Surat, Somnath-Veraval and Porbandar remained peaceful.
The authorities of the Somnath Temple—demolished by the Afghan warlord Mahmud of Ghazi in 1026, an act that still scars the imagination of many Hindus—actually leased out lands, two centuries later, to the trans-oceanic trader Nuruddin Firuz of Hormuz.
This communal peace wasn’t built on appeals to shared culture, or human values. Instead, it rested on joint assets, shared opportunities—and cold cash. Business leaders—not politicians or police—might hold the keys to building a durable foundation for secularism in India.
From the stellar work of social scientists like Stanford business school’s Saumitra Jha, we know the sinews of cities—the complex economic and social relations that tie massive populations together—have a critical bearing on communal violence.
Jha studied medieval Indian ports like Surat and Porbandar where, for hundreds of years before the arrival of Portuguese colonialism in 1498, Muslim traders had given Indian manufactures access to global markets. Hindus and Muslims, in these medieval ports, were locked into relationships of mutual inter-dependence.
Even though medieval port cities were characterised by both mixed religious populations and poverty—conditions typically associated with communal violence—Jha found they, on average, experienced “around five times fewer communal riots, on average”. From 1850 to 1950, 10 percent of medieval port cities had at least one outbreak of communal violence; for other cities, the figure was 40 percent.
The intensity of communal violence in medieval port cities was also lower“Five medieval ports”, Jha writes, “together experienced a single death due to religious violence, but in other towns, religious violence claimed an average of 23 lives per town”.
In essence, the social and economic structures of these medieval port cities had engendered cultures where violence was successfully contained.
Ahmedabad, where segregated guilds and gated pol neighbourhoods divided textile producers by religion and caste, saw repeated communal violence from 1646 onwards. The medieval port of Surat, by contrast, was largely peaceful. The Ismaili Bohra community’s access to Indian Ocean trading networks made them invaluable to the wider community.
For enlightened medieval rulers, the gains from religious tolerance were obvious. In a 1583 treatise, the scholar Zainuddin Makhdum noted that the Kerala Zamorin’s policy of tolerance towards Muslim traders saw Kozhikode grow “into a big city, where with prospering trade and economic opportunities, various kinds of people, Muslims as well as unbelievers, collected”. “The Zamorin”, Makhdum observed, “thus became more powerful and influential than the rest of the rulers”.
Ashutosh Varshney path-breaking work on communal violence has also underlined the importance of consociational relations to the making of a robust communal fabric.
In peaceful Kozhikode, Varshney found that the business community was linked through a wide range of professional associations, clubs and even institutions like reading rooms. These interactions had created
But in Aligarh—slowly ghettoised by violence since the 1930s—there were no similar relationships. Although there were successful Hindu-owned and Muslim-owned businesses, there was little social contact between the two groups—and, more important, “virtually no inter-communal dependence”. Even traders’ bodies and credit sources had polarised on communal lines.
Little difference exists between this landscape and that of north-east Delhi. In one government survey of the garment trade in Seelampur, the bulk of workers and contractors were found to be Muslim; the majority of wholesale traders caste Hindus.
Nine out of ten Kozhikode’s Hindus and Muslims reported that their children played together, Varshney recorded;, but “ in Aligarh a mere 42 percent report that to be the case”.
In Seelampur, scholar Kartik Sivaram and co-authors have found, even Hindu and Muslim school children, inhabiting the same classrooms through the day, rarely visited each others’ homes.
Even as ethnic-religious strains are mounting, the Indian state’s ability to manage them isn’t. The abject failure of the Delhi Police last week isn’t, sadly, exceptional. Former Director-General of Police Prakash Singh’s official inquiry into the 2016 violence in Haryana showed the administration had, simply, imploded in the face of caste strains. In 2017, police proved unable to contain Dalit violence, unleashed by the arrest of the religious leader Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh.
In north-east Delhi, the majority of victims were killed with small arms at point blank rage, a warning-sign of the growing weaponisation of criminal groups even within the capital. The consequences of communal violence are not trivial: from Lebanon to Nigeria and Iraq, there’s a long list of nation-states which have imploded because of chronic inter-religious violence.
The toxic landscape of north-east Delhi is a microcosm of India’s prospect-less, frustrated youth cohort. Forty-three percent of north-east Delhi’s population is between 20 and 40 years old; just 11% of residents of Hindu majority areas, and less than 10% of residents of Muslim-majority areas, had graduated from high school, one study found.
For all practical purposes, this youth cohort is unemployable. As small manufacturing operations have contracted over the last two years, finding work is becoming ever-harder—a key enabling condition for the communal rage seen in north-east Delhi.
Torn apart by ethnic riots in 1965, Singapore faced similar dilemmas: economic progress, its leaders knew, simply could not come about in a society torn by primal violence. Large-scale public housing projects, scholar Beatrice di Mauro has recorded, were used as tools enforce residential integration of income classes and ethnicities.
Ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians found themselves compelled to live next door to each other: would-be rioters wanting to burn the homes of one group would have to also be willing to destroy their own.
In 1947, a survey had recorded that Singapore remained “one of the world’s worst slums” and a “disgrace to a civilised community”; inside three decades, the city-state stood transformed.
Though racial tensions remain an ugly fact of life in the United States, census data makes clear the country’s cities are more integrated than at any time since 1890—and that the “all-white” urban neighbourhood is almost extinct.
Though progress has been slow, public policy interventions have brought real gains for social integration.
From experience, it’s clear that the challenge can be overcome in India, too—though not by politicians, who have perverse electoral incentives to accentuate ethic-religious violence. In the wake of the 1993 riots, civil society organisations successfully united communities around diverse struggles for women’s empowerment, resources and civic rights. Those struggles are an important reason why Mumbai has not had a major communal riot since then.
Enlightened self-interest suggests India’s business leaders need to invest in social stability: to encourage the formation of business relationships and credit networks cutting across communal lines; recruit diverse workforces that unite castes and religious groups; push government to invest in the creation of community infrastructure and resources.
The option is a nation at perpetual war with itself—a nation which may not endure.
Praveen Swami is Group Consulting Editor, Network18
The next day, irate Muslims slaughtered a cow on the same street. Fighting followed, and a young Muslim was killed. Backed by the governor’s Afghan mercenaries, mobs pillaged Hindu neighbourhoods, killing as they went.
This week, as India counts the costs of last week’s savage communal violence in its capital—estimated at a staggering Rs 25,000 crore by the Delhi Chamber of Commerce—it’s easy to see how little some things have changed little in three centuries. From India’s medieval past, though, it’s also clear there are other kinds of models of communal relationships. Even as Ahmedabad exploded in 1713, the port cities of Surat, Somnath-Veraval and Porbandar remained peaceful.
The authorities of the Somnath Temple—demolished by the Afghan warlord Mahmud of Ghazi in 1026, an act that still scars the imagination of many Hindus—actually leased out lands, two centuries later, to the trans-oceanic trader Nuruddin Firuz of Hormuz.
This communal peace wasn’t built on appeals to shared culture, or human values. Instead, it rested on joint assets, shared opportunities—and cold cash. Business leaders—not politicians or police—might hold the keys to building a durable foundation for secularism in India.
From the stellar work of social scientists like Stanford business school’s Saumitra Jha, we know the sinews of cities—the complex economic and social relations that tie massive populations together—have a critical bearing on communal violence.
Jha studied medieval Indian ports like Surat and Porbandar where, for hundreds of years before the arrival of Portuguese colonialism in 1498, Muslim traders had given Indian manufactures access to global markets. Hindus and Muslims, in these medieval ports, were locked into relationships of mutual inter-dependence.
Even though medieval port cities were characterised by both mixed religious populations and poverty—conditions typically associated with communal violence—Jha found they, on average, experienced “around five times fewer communal riots, on average”. From 1850 to 1950, 10 percent of medieval port cities had at least one outbreak of communal violence; for other cities, the figure was 40 percent.
The intensity of communal violence in medieval port cities was also lower“Five medieval ports”, Jha writes, “together experienced a single death due to religious violence, but in other towns, religious violence claimed an average of 23 lives per town”.
In essence, the social and economic structures of these medieval port cities had engendered cultures where violence was successfully contained.
Ahmedabad, where segregated guilds and gated pol neighbourhoods divided textile producers by religion and caste, saw repeated communal violence from 1646 onwards. The medieval port of Surat, by contrast, was largely peaceful. The Ismaili Bohra community’s access to Indian Ocean trading networks made them invaluable to the wider community.
For enlightened medieval rulers, the gains from religious tolerance were obvious. In a 1583 treatise, the scholar Zainuddin Makhdum noted that the Kerala Zamorin’s policy of tolerance towards Muslim traders saw Kozhikode grow “into a big city, where with prospering trade and economic opportunities, various kinds of people, Muslims as well as unbelievers, collected”. “The Zamorin”, Makhdum observed, “thus became more powerful and influential than the rest of the rulers”.
Ashutosh Varshney path-breaking work on communal violence has also underlined the importance of consociational relations to the making of a robust communal fabric.
In peaceful Kozhikode, Varshney found that the business community was linked through a wide range of professional associations, clubs and even institutions like reading rooms. These interactions had created
But in Aligarh—slowly ghettoised by violence since the 1930s—there were no similar relationships. Although there were successful Hindu-owned and Muslim-owned businesses, there was little social contact between the two groups—and, more important, “virtually no inter-communal dependence”. Even traders’ bodies and credit sources had polarised on communal lines.
Little difference exists between this landscape and that of north-east Delhi. In one government survey of the garment trade in Seelampur, the bulk of workers and contractors were found to be Muslim; the majority of wholesale traders caste Hindus.
Nine out of ten Kozhikode’s Hindus and Muslims reported that their children played together, Varshney recorded;, but “ in Aligarh a mere 42 percent report that to be the case”.
In Seelampur, scholar Kartik Sivaram and co-authors have found, even Hindu and Muslim school children, inhabiting the same classrooms through the day, rarely visited each others’ homes.
Even as ethnic-religious strains are mounting, the Indian state’s ability to manage them isn’t. The abject failure of the Delhi Police last week isn’t, sadly, exceptional. Former Director-General of Police Prakash Singh’s official inquiry into the 2016 violence in Haryana showed the administration had, simply, imploded in the face of caste strains. In 2017, police proved unable to contain Dalit violence, unleashed by the arrest of the religious leader Gurmit Ram Rahim Singh.
In north-east Delhi, the majority of victims were killed with small arms at point blank rage, a warning-sign of the growing weaponisation of criminal groups even within the capital. The consequences of communal violence are not trivial: from Lebanon to Nigeria and Iraq, there’s a long list of nation-states which have imploded because of chronic inter-religious violence.
The toxic landscape of north-east Delhi is a microcosm of India’s prospect-less, frustrated youth cohort. Forty-three percent of north-east Delhi’s population is between 20 and 40 years old; just 11% of residents of Hindu majority areas, and less than 10% of residents of Muslim-majority areas, had graduated from high school, one study found.
For all practical purposes, this youth cohort is unemployable. As small manufacturing operations have contracted over the last two years, finding work is becoming ever-harder—a key enabling condition for the communal rage seen in north-east Delhi.
Torn apart by ethnic riots in 1965, Singapore faced similar dilemmas: economic progress, its leaders knew, simply could not come about in a society torn by primal violence. Large-scale public housing projects, scholar Beatrice di Mauro has recorded, were used as tools enforce residential integration of income classes and ethnicities.
Ethnic Chinese, Malays and Indians found themselves compelled to live next door to each other: would-be rioters wanting to burn the homes of one group would have to also be willing to destroy their own.
In 1947, a survey had recorded that Singapore remained “one of the world’s worst slums” and a “disgrace to a civilised community”; inside three decades, the city-state stood transformed.
Though racial tensions remain an ugly fact of life in the United States, census data makes clear the country’s cities are more integrated than at any time since 1890—and that the “all-white” urban neighbourhood is almost extinct.
Though progress has been slow, public policy interventions have brought real gains for social integration.
From experience, it’s clear that the challenge can be overcome in India, too—though not by politicians, who have perverse electoral incentives to accentuate ethic-religious violence. In the wake of the 1993 riots, civil society organisations successfully united communities around diverse struggles for women’s empowerment, resources and civic rights. Those struggles are an important reason why Mumbai has not had a major communal riot since then.
Enlightened self-interest suggests India’s business leaders need to invest in social stability: to encourage the formation of business relationships and credit networks cutting across communal lines; recruit diverse workforces that unite castes and religious groups; push government to invest in the creation of community infrastructure and resources.
The option is a nation at perpetual war with itself—a nation which may not endure.
Praveen Swami is Group Consulting Editor, Network18
First Published: Mar 2, 2020 9:54 PM IST
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