About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

17 Nw. J. Int'l L. & Bus. 320 (1996-1997)
Judicial Complicity with Communal Violence in India

handle is hein.journals/nwjilb17 and id is 326 raw text is: Judicial Complicity with Communal Violence in India Sara Ahmad INTRODUCTION Communal violence - or violence between groups which define themselves by their differences from each other' - is one of the fore- most human rights problems today.2 But the violence of the past 20 years differs from that of previous decades. Responsibility for current sectarian violence lies not with specific extremist groups but with gov- ernments which leverage inter-group hatred to gain power.3 Such sys- temic sources of communal violence threaten basic principles of democratic government and non-discrimination.4 Present-day communal violence originates in identity politics.5 Identity politics stress the group nature of rights, experience and iden- tity, whether based on race, sex, caste, class, language, religion or na- tional or regional origin.6 In many cases, the political-cultural I HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH, PLAYING THE COMMUNAL CARD: COMMUNAL VIOLENCE AND HUMAN RIGHTS vii (1995). 2 i. 3 Id. at vii-viii. 4 See id. 5 Id. at x. 6 See Valentine M. Moghadam, Preface to IDErrY PoLmcs & WOMEN: CULTURAL REAS- SERTIONS AND FEMINISMS IN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECrrVE ix, ix (Valentine M. Moghadam ed., 1994) (identity politics refers to discourses and movements organized around questions of religious, ethnic, and national identity); see also Vincent Cable, The Diminished Nation-State: A Study in the Loss of Economic Power. What Future for the State?, DAEDALUS, Spring, 1995, at 23, 44-45; Leonard Stem, Cultural Collision: Why the Jewish-Black Alliance Has Come Apart at the Seams, THE OTTAWA CrrIzEN, Jan. 22, 1995, at B1. Stem characterizes the operative assumption of identity politics as the assumption that a specific trait has some essentialist value. Id.

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most