Composing Violence

Moyukh Chatterjee is a Lecturer in the Department of Social Anthropology in the University of Edinburgh.

Acknowledgments ix Introduction. The Limits of Exposure 1 1. A Minor Reading 34 2. Composing the Archive 56 3. Against the Witness 76 4. Anti-Impunity Activism 93 5. Beyond the Unspeakable 107 Conclusion. Minor, Minorities, Minorization 127 Notes 139 Bibliography 151 Index 163

"It is through scholarship of the kind offered by Composing Violence that we can grapple with questions of mass violence, impunity and justice after violence in South Asia, and beyond, in any meaningful way." - Chulani Kodikara (Social and Legal Studies) "Composing Violence provides us with a necessary punch in the stomach. Its urgency lies in the way in which it forces us to look at, and begin to think anew with, what we know well but persist in overlooking: that violence against (religious) minorities is not exceptional or deviant, but mainstream." - Vera Lazzaretti (Religion and Society) "Chatterjee is at his best when he observes, records, and analyses in his own voice; Composing Violence is a testimonial to the importance of the activist-academic in combating the ideological and institutional forms of right-wing majoritarianism in India and elsewhere." - Suvir Kaul (American Ethnologist) "Composing Violence is an important read in the face of, and as a form of equipment against, globally rising right-wing politics and the everyday threat of Hindu nationalism." - Anushka Chaudhuri (Contemporary South Asia)