|
View the H-Asia Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-Asia's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-Asia's November 2009 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-Asia home page.
H-ASIA
November 18, 2009
Group Violence, Terrorism and impunity: Challenges to Secularism and Rule
of Law in India: A Workshop @ Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
April 9-10, 2010
************************************************************************
From: Omar Khalidi <okhalidi@MIT.EDU>
Group Violence, Terrorism and impunity: Challenges to Secularism and Rule
of Law in India: A Workshop
Sponsored by the Program in Human Rights and Justice at the Center for
International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this
workshop will be held on April 9, 10 2010 at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
In recent decades, group violence, especially communal violence, has
become a recurrent theme in the lives of Indians in many parts of the
country. Starting with the anti-Sikh massacres in 1984, communal violence
has continued to challenge India's secular credentials in the Ayodhya
riots (1992), Mumbai bomb blasts (1994), Gujarat pogrom (2002), in the
Orissa riots (2008). There is a rising phenomenon of terrorism, as seen in
the Mumbai terror attacks (2008), which lead to societal and State
responses that centrally challenge secularism and rule of law. There is a
dire need to study these forms of violence and the impunity enjoyed by its
perpetrators. This workshop thus aims to fulfill a timely need to examine
the roots and processes of such violence. The workshop begins with the
premise that rather than being endemic to the region, group violence needs
to be contextualized and is always historically contingent. Violence,
whether perpetrated by terrorists or civil society or states, is a process
rather than a discrete product of random "mob" activity. India has
had a history of violence based on religious and cultural differences
since the colonial period culminating in the Partition violence of 1947.
The workshop seeks to explore how and why such violence continues, or is
different in the postcolonial period. Among the ideological reasons for
violence are differing ideas of India, of who, what groups or communities
belong to it and who are the others/outsiders even if they meet the
criteria of legal definition of citizenship. Similar is the case with
variant definitions of secularism and its implementation by the
postcolonial state.
This workshop seeks to critically engage with the relationship between
group violence and the rule of law. In doing so, it seeks to put to test
the many definitions of 'secularism' and examine the role of the Indian
state in perpetuating group violence.
Prof. Paul Brass, University of Washington will give the keynote address.
Besides the organizers, participants include Brad Adams (Human Rights
Watch); Prof. Angana Chatterji, California Institute of Integral Studies;
Prof. Parviz Ghassem-Fashandi, Rutgers University; Dr. Ratna Kapoor, CFLR
New Delhi; Shafiq R. Mahajir, Attorney, Hyderabad; Harvinder S. Phoolka,
Attorney, New Delhi; R.K. Raghavan, IPS, retd; former Director of Central
Bureau of Investigation; Prof. Bish Sanyal, MIT; Attorney Mukul Sinha,
Jan Sangharsh Manch, Ahmedabad; Prof. Srirupa Roy, University of
Massachusetts-Amherst; and Siddharth Varadarjan, Chief of National Bureau
and Strategic Affairs Editor, The Hindu.
A final program will be announced in January 2010. For further
information, please contact the organizers:
Prof Balakrishanan Rajagopal
braj@mit.edu
Prof. Haimanti Roy
Haimanti@mit.edu
For further information & rsvp, pl. contact
Dr Omar Khalidi
AKPIA Librarian
okhalidi@mit.edu
******************************************************************
To post to H-ASIA simply send your message to:
<H-ASIA@h-net.msu.edu>
For holidays or short absences send post to:
<listserv@h-net.msu.edu> with message:
SET H-ASIA NOMAIL
Upon return, send post with message SET H-ASIA MAIL
H-ASIA WEB HOMEPAGE URL: http://h-net.msu.edu/~asia/
 Humanities & Social Sciences Online 
|