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Composing violence: the limits of exposure and the making of minorities, by Moyukh Chatterjee, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 2023, 184 pp., $24.03 (paperback), ISBN: 978-1478019664
In Composing the Violence. The Limits of Exposure and the Making of Minorities Young author Moyukh Chatterjee finds it challenging to understand the technology and social grounds of permanent and frequent Muslim masses in India. Representatives of the police often partake in them, and the authorities are instead the provocateur of these issues, but they do not perform their duties to protect national and religious minorities in any way. Pogroms and riots are becoming a social phenomenon – “a time for ordinary Hindus to enjoy extraordinary power” (23). Indeed, Muslim pogroms in some provinces of India are incredibly bloody, monstrous, inexcusable, and humiliating for the largest democracy in the world. The research methodology is highly elaborate and deep. The author used sociological research methods: field studies, interviews, and visits to events of nationalist Indian organizations, which the author describes in detail (15). The book’s significant advantage is that Chatterjee details TV shows in India in which hatred of the Muslim minority is spreading. In addition, the scientist confirms his thesis with pictures examined during his expeditions in Gujarat (131-133). As a political technology, the Hindu nationalist call for a shutdown, affirmed by the ruling regime, invited Hindus across caste, class, and sectarian divisions to participate, witness, and relish the public punishment of Muslims. Hindu supremacists in India record their assaults on Muslims on cell phones and proudly share them online to become offline heroes (127). Curiously, Chatterjee cites the English colonial person A. K. Forbes, who left behind Ras Mala notes: Hindoo Annals of the Province of Gooserat in Western India (1856). According to the author “Colonial British accounts influenced Hindu nationalists”. ‘Forbes also described the “tall minaret of the Moslem” in Ahmedabad as a symbol of Muslim tyranny This colonial history of Hindus as a race defeated by invading Muslims cemented the idea that “the true history of India was five thousand years long, and that the Muslims in India were foreigners, whose only relation to the native inhabitants was one of despotism.” (18).