‘What worries me is the decline in public discourse, with violence no longer delegitimised as it should be in a civilised society’
Avijit Ghosh
Avijit Ghosh is a associate editor with The Times of India. He is addicted to films, music, cricket and football—and not necessarily in that order. He is the author of Bandi LESS
… MORE
Social scientist Devesh Kapur teaches politics and society at Johns Hopkins University. His latest book is Internal Security in India: Violence, Order and the State, co-edited with Amit Ahuja. In Delhi recently, he spoke to Avijit Ghosh about the trajectory of violence in India
● How has political violence played out in India after Independence?
The 1950s were relatively peaceful. From the 1960s, we see societal stirrings as the economy stalls. Political competition grows. Disorder grows, expressed in industrial strife, student protests, inter-community violence, be it over language in Assam in the early 1960s or communal violence in RanchiHatia (then in Bihar) in 1967. It grows in the first half of the 1970s culminating in the JP movement before the Emergency. In the 1980s, we witness terrorism and rising communal violence. Insurgency-related violence mounts, in Punjab, then NE, then in J&K and the Maoist movement in central India. That’s roughly the trajectory in the next quarter century. While violence continued in the past two decades, we also see its ebbing. Insurgencies, student protests, industrial strife, terrorist attacks – all have ebbed.
Read full story on TOI+
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
END OF ARTICLE