Abstract:
This study aims to better understand contemporary communal violence in India. It looks at the relationship between politics, electoral competition and communal violence. Temporally, the study is based on communal violence data between 2006 to 2016. The study relies on secondary quantitative data collected by various agencies of the Government of India and the Centre for Study in Secularism and Society (CSSS). The number of communal incidents and the number of deaths are the dependent variables. Party seat share, vote share and population distribution are the independent variables. The data collected led to two important observations. Firstly, there are variations in violence levels and intensity between states. Since 2000, violence in some states has become more frequent, while others have become less frequent. Some states witness more intense violence while others witness less intense violence. Secondly, there is a difference in the nature of communal violence during the first wave of Hindu nationalism in the 1980s and the second wave after 2009. The study finds three crucial factors that account for these observations. These are electoral competition, population distribution and the growth of Hindu Nationalism. Violence is likely to be more frequent in states which witness a multi-party electoral contest. Violence is likely to be more intense in states where the Muslim population is concentrated in certain districts. The rise in communal violence has broadly matched the trajectory of the rise of Hindu Nationalism. The changing nature of discourse during the second wave of Hindu Nationalism has resulted in violence becoming less intense after 2009.