Riots and Pogroms

274 Pages·1996·27.706 MB·English

by  Paul R. Brass (eds.)

RIOTS AND POGROMS
Also by Paul R. Brass
CASTE, FACTION AND PARTY IN INDIAN POLITICS,
Vol. I: Election Studies, Vol. 11: Faction and Party
ETHNIC GROUPS AND THE STATE
ETHNICITY AND NATIONALISM: Theory and Comparison
FACTIONAL POLITICS IN AN INDIAN STATE: The Congress
Party in Uttar Pradesh
THE INDIAN NATIONAL CONGRESS AND INDIAN SOCIETY
1885-1985: Ideology, Social Structure, and Political Dominance
(with Francis Robinson)
LANGUAGE, RELIGION, AND POLITICS IN NORTH INDIA
THE POLITICS OF INDIA SINCE INDEPENDENCE, 2nd edition
Vol. IV:i of the New Cambridge History of India
RADICAL POLITICS IN SOUTH ASIA (with Marcus Franda)
SCIENCE, POLITICS, AND THE AGRICULTURAL
REVOLUTION IN ASIA (with Rober! S. Anderson, Edwin Levy and
Barrie M. Morrison)
Riots and Pogroms
Edited by
Paul R. Brass
Professor of Political Science and South Asian Studies
University ofWashington
M
MACMllLAN
Se1ection, editorial matter and Chapter I © Paul R. Brass 1996
Chapter 2 - 9 © Macmillan Press Ltd 1996
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First published 1996 by
MACMILLAN PRESS L TD
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and London
Companies and representatives
throughout the world
ISBN 978-0-333-66976-1 ISBN 978-1-349-24867-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-24867-4
A catalogue record for this book is available
from the British Library.
10987654321
05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96
Contents
Notes on the Contributors vii
Preface ix
1. Introduction: Discourses of Ethnicity, Communalism,
and Violence
Paul R. Brass
2. Anti-Jewish Violence and Revolution in Late Imperial Russia:
Odessa, 1905
Robert Weinberg 56
3. The Pogrom ofNovember, 9-10 1938 in Germany
Leonidas E. Hill 89
4. Divisions at the Center: The Organization ofPolitical Violence
at Jerusalem's Temple Mountlal-haram al-sharif-
1929 and 1990
Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hecht 114
5. Riots and Rituals: The Construction ofViolence and Public
Space in Hindu Nationalism
Peter van der Veer 154
6. Dharma Yudh: Communal Violence, Riots and Public Space
in Ayodhya and Agra City: 1990 and 1992
Jayati Chaturvedi and Gyaneshwar Chaturvedi 177
7. The Anti-Sikh Riots of 1984 in Delhi: Politicians, Criminals,
and the Discourse of Communalism
Virginia van Dyke 201
8. Racial Killing or Barroom Brawl?
Multiple Explanations of the Killing of Vincent Chin
Yen Le Espiritu 221
9. African American Boycotts of Korean-Owned Stores
in New York and Los Angeles
Edward T. Chang 235
Index 253
To All Human Rights Workers
N otes on the Contributors
Paul R. Brass is Professor of Politieal Seienee and South Asian Studies at
the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of The Politics of
India Since Independence (Cambridge University Press, 1994, 2nd ed.) and
Ethnicity and Nationalism: Theory and Comparison (Sage, 1991), among
other works. He has just eompleted a book on ineidents of publie violenee
in India, ealled Theft ofa n Idol, to be published by Prineeton University Press
in 1996.
Edward Taehan Chang is Direetor of the Center for Asian Paeific Ameriea
(CAPA) and Assistant Professor of Ethnie Studies at the University of
California, Riverside. He has eo-edited two volumes on the Los Angeles eivil
unrest: Los Angeles: Struggles toward Multiethnic Community (University
of Washington Press, 1995) and Building Multiethnic Coalitions in Los
Angeles (Institute for Asian Ameriean and Pacifie Ameriean Studies at
CSULA, 1995).
Gyaneshwar and Jayati Chaturvedi are, respectively, Chairman and Senior
Leeturer in the Department of Political Seienee, St. John's College, Agra.
Jayati is the author of Indian National Movement: A Critical Study of Five
Schools (MG Publishers, Agra, 1989).
Yen Le Espiritu is Associate Professor or Ethnic Studies and Soeiology at
the University of California, San Diego. She is the author of Asian American
Panethnicity: Bridging Institutions and Identities (Temple University Press,
1992) and Filipino American Lives (Temple University Press, 1995).
Roger Friedland and Richard D. Hecht are respeetively professors of
Soeiology and Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa
Barbara. Their ethnographie study of the religion and polities of Jerusalem,
To Rule Jerusalem, is to be published by Cambridge University Press (1996).
Their historical analysis of the eontests over sovereignty and saerality in the
city will also be published by Cambridge as Jerusalem: The Profane Politics
of a Sacred Place, in 1997.
Leonidas E. HilI is Professor ofHistory at the University ofBritish Columbia.
He has edited books and articles in German and English on Ernst von
Weizsäcker, notably Die Weizsäcker Papiere 1900-1932 (Berlin, 1982), and
vii
Vlll Riots and Pogroms
has published several articles as weIl on German foreign policy, resistance
to the Nazi regime, and the Holocaust.
Peter van der Veer is Professor of Comparative Religion and Director of
the Research Centre Religion and Society at the University of Amsterdam.
He is the author of Gods on Earth (Athlone Press, 1988) and Religious
Nationalism (University of California Press, 1994) and the editor of Nation
and Migration (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995) and Conversion to
Modemities (Routledge, 1995), among other works.
Virginia Van Dyke hasjust completed the field work in India for her Ph.D.
dissertation in the Department ofPolitical Science, University ofWashington,
on the subject ofReligious Specialists in Political Mobilization in North India.
Robert Weinberg is Associate Professor of History at Swarthmore College.
He is the author of The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps
(Indiana University Presss, 1993) and is currently writing a history of
Birobidzhan, the Jewish Autonomous Region in Russia.
Preface
This volume originated in the Seminar of the program in Comparative
Studies in Ethnicity and Nationality (CSEN) at the University ofWashington,
held in the Spring Quarter, 1991, under the sponsorship of the Jackson
School for International Studies. Earlier versions of all but two of the papers
were presented at that seminar. Seven of the original papers were selected
for publication and have been substantially revised since then while two new
contributions were solicited as weIl, one from Gyan and Jayatai Chaturvedi
on communal tension in Agra in 1990 and 1992 and the other by Virginia
Van Dyke on the anti-Sikh massacres in New Delhi in 1984. All but one of
the contributions, that by Robert Weinberg, are being published for the first
time in this volume.
Riots and Pogroms provides comparative studies ofpublic violence in the
twentieth century in Russia, Germany, Israel, India, and the United States,
with a comparative, historical, and analytical introduction by the editor.
This is the first comparative and historical study done on the subject of riots
and pogroms. A common framework has been provided by the editor, parts
of which have been addressed by each of the contributors depending upon
their relevance to each case. All the contributions in turn provide original
material on particular occurrences of public violence, which iIIustrate the
general argument.
The book departs from the conventional social science search for the
causes of public violence to focus upon the struggle which takes place
afterwards to gain control over the right to interpret it. The concern of the
editor and contributors is with the contest to capture the meaning of riotous
events, for the right to represent them properly. This conflict encompasses
their labelling, the making of judgments concerning their causes, the deter
mination ofthe social composition and motives ofrioters and "pogromists,"
the degree of organization and/or spontaneity involved in riots and pogroms,
the reasons why members of particular groups are selected for violent
assaults, and the degree of implication in them of the state and its agents.
Finally, the settlement upon a particular interpretation of major incidents of
public violence, particularly when they occur simultaneously or in rapid
sequence in a particular country, involves the assessment ofblame: which
groups or which social problems "explain" their occurrence adequately. The
assignment of causes and the assessment of blame in turn have significant
implications for public policies to prevent their repetition.
IX