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Research Series
Volume 98: The Myth of "Ethnic Conflict": Politics, Economics, and "Cultural" Violence
Cultural Conflict in India: Punjab and Kashmir
Nirvikar
Singh,
University of California, Santa Cruz
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ABSTRACT: The conflicts in Punjab and Kashmir, two of the most visible
and violent in recent Indian history, provide a natural case study for
the causes of cultural conflict. These two regions differ in many
ways—language, religion, culture, and geography, to name just a
few. Yet in both states ethnicity and religion have become politicized
in surprisingly similar ways. Both these conflicts involve issues of
cultural identity. They are often labeled ethnic or sectarian conflicts,
with the assumption that this labeling explains them.
In this chapter, I take issue with this perspective. I will examine
the ways in which each state’s respective relationship to the institutions
of the Indian central state has served as the focal point for the
creation and maintenance of cultural identity. Despite the professed
goal of secularism, the Indian state has enabled and even caused
ethnic cleavages to become politically charged. In the pages to follow,
I treat each case independently, starting with Punjab and then
turning to Kashmir. In the final section I relate and compare the two
cases, especially with regard to the role of the broader economic,
political, and institutional forces at work.
Nirvikar Singh "Cultural Conflict in India: Punjab and Kashmir." In The Myth of "Ethnic Conflict": Politics, Economics, and "Cultural" Violence, edited by Beverly Crawford and Ronnie D. Lipschutz. University of California Press/University of California International and Area Studies Digital Collection, Edited Volume #98, pp. 320-352, 1998. http://repositories.cdlib.org/uciaspubs/research/98/10
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