Memories in the Service of the Hindu Nation

Pranav Kohli teaches Sociology at Maynooth University, Ireland. He is a political anthropologist specialising in race, gender, conflict, authoritarianism and memory with an abiding interest in their intersections with the politics of health.

'This book's vital focus on the narrated experiences of dislocation and everyday violence stemming from the political policy of Partition is relevant to current global experiences of forcible displacement within and across national borders. Kohli's thoughtful analysis of the redeployment of memory to serve present notions of national belonging and exclusion is an especially germane contribution to understanding the increasing number of multicultural democracies experiencing a rise in xenophobic claims of rightful - more rigidly inscribed - publics within nations as a justification for restricting targeted groups' rights, safety, and sense of belonging. The author considers the mysterious question of how “mob” violence can be attributed to outsiders by everyone involved without participants' recollection or recognition of their own individual acts of violence, or accountability for them.' Ann E. Kingsolver, University of Kentucky

• Acknowledgements; Glossary; Prologue: The Linguistic Setting; Part I. The Past and the Present: Introduction; 1. Listening to Ancestors: Ethnography in a Milieu of Memory; Part II: Sacrifice and Suffering: The Purusharth of Refugees; 2. Stories of Purusharth; 3. A Story Half Told: The Moral and Political Claims of Purusharth; 4. Sacrifice and Hard Work: Martyrdom as Theodicy; 5. The Purusharth of Women; Part III. Remembrance and Healing: Reflections on the Post-Partition Context; 6. The Fractured Nomos; 7. Remembering Violence; 8. Remembering Partition in the Time of Fascism; 9. Healing, Victimhood and Ressentiment; Conclusion: Field Notes on Global Authoritarianism; Works Cited; Index.