![]()
1
A taxonomy of political violence in South Asia
Ali Riaz
Political violence is ubiquitous in South Asia. Instability in South Asian countries, namely India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and Sri Lanka, has been subject to media attention and discussions for quite a long time. With ‘probably […] the highest number of armed formations engaged in political violence, and the greatest variations in terms of their ideological orientations’1 the region warrants further exploration of actors, forms, causes of, and conditions for persistence of political violence. There is a growing body of literature on violence in general and particularly on political violence, in the past decades.2 Yet, a taxonomy of political violence in South Asia is wanting.
This chapter draws attention to this lacuna and offers a preliminary sketch as a proposal for further discussions. The chapter identifies common factors of violence within five nations and categorize them under several themes drawing on the defining characteristics. Taking a broad range of collective actions, from insurgency to religion inspired violence to state sponsored/perpetrated violence, this chapter demonstrates that ethnic, religious, sectarian, ideological, institutional, and secessionist/separatist violence are present in different formulations in the region. It also argues that states in South Asia play a conspicuous role not only in exerting institutional violence (i.e. violence perpetrated by institutions such as state or political parties) but also in other forms of violence. Notwithstanding the different forms of violence, identity politics plays an influential role in engendering them.
Conceptual clarifications
Political violence is a concept that is far from straightforward and yet it is used quite frequently. Nowhere is it more obvious than in the available definitions of the concept. While Patrick O’Neil highlights ‘politically motivated violence outside of state control’3 as the key aspect of political violence, Wilke et al. unequivocally state, ‘violence should be considered political if and when it aims at the state.’4 Studies and discussions on political violence often start from a minimalist understanding that political violence is ‘violence that is committed in the context of a political conflict, or that can be related, either through its cause or through its motive, to political issues.’5 The definition is open to interpretations as to what constitutes a cause or a motive and whether the action it is connected to is the issue in question. There is also the understanding that political violence is ‘not simply individual aggression writ large.’6
Notwithstanding the definitional ambiguity and dominance of two ‘unsatisfactory’ strands of accounts, extant studies on political violence, particularly that which drives policy-making processes, is fraught with another serious problem: what is described as political violence is often based on value judgment rather than a descriptive presentation of the fact. This problem is intrinsically connected to an a priori assumption as to what constitutes political violence, that is, certain actions are already identified as political violence while others are not.
This, then, is followed by efforts to offer causal explanations. Within this schema individual behavior serves as the point of departure. The discussions follow the path of making a distinction between individual crimes and group violence, and consequently endeavor to explain why individuals commit violence, but as a group instead of as an individual. In this regard, Tilly has appropriately summarized that there are three schools of thought – idea people, behavior people, and relation people. The idea people underscore that ‘worth of others and desirability of aggressive actions significantly affect the propensity of a person or a people to join in collective violence’; the behaviorist school has its genesis in the evolutionary explanations, that is collective violence is ‘sum of individual behaviors’ and is a result of tied to ‘impacts of particular genes.’ However, it has recently transformed into an argument in favor of human agency. Within this frame, the individual has the autonomy of motives, impulses, and opportunities. Behaviorists argue against the deterministic nature of ideas, and against any structures. The relation people, on the other hand, argue that ‘transactions among persons and groups [are] far more central than idea or behavior.’7 The structuralists can be included in this category, as they tend to render a primacy to socio-economic structures in shaping human behaviors. Some suggest that a combination of these three elements causes violent behavior. Tilly has suggested that Classical Marxists fall within this category, although there is an economic determinism inherent in this approach.
Kalyvas, drawing on the available studies, argues that:
Political actors use violence to achieve multiple, overlapping, and sometimes mutually contradictory goals. Various literatures detail more than twenty uses for violence, including intimidation, demoralization, polarization, demonstration, radicalization of the public, publicity, the improvement of group morale, the enforcement or disruption of control, the mobilization of forces and resources, financing, the elimination of opposing forces, the sanction of cooperation with the enemy, and the provocation of countermeasures and repression.8
It is also true that ‘violence may be used with no goal in mind.’ These causality arguments, however, fail to provide a clear definition of ‘political violence.’
Comprehending the concept of political violence requires it to be situated within the discussion of ‘collective violence.’ There are three categories with this: situational, organized, and institutional. The defining characteristic of situational collective violence is that they are ‘unplanned and spontaneous.’ As such, there is no premeditation and ‘collective’ is not pre-determined formulation. On the contrary, the organized collective violence is by definition organized but lacks ‘institutional authorization.’ That does not necessarily mean that it is not authorized by a group and rationalized through an ideology. Instead often it is the group’s pre-meditation that allows this to take place. The institutional collective violence ‘is carried out under the direction of legally constituted officials.’9
These two strands, causality and categories, while apparently treading two different paths can be reconciled. A simple way to bring these two together is to reformulate them as institutional, ideational, and individual explanations and examining the reasoning. Institutional violence is that which originates in the actions of existing institutions. O’Neil has suggested that ‘existing institutions may encourage violence or constrain human action, creating a violent backlash’; the sources and justification of ideational violence rest on the ideas/ ideologies – ‘ideas may justify or promote the use of violence’; and ‘psychological or strategic factors which may lead people to carry out violence’ are categorized as individual violence.10
Categories and explanations, although offering a broad picture, do not offer a precise definition. To develop a workable definition, we need to explore how violence is defined in the extant studies. Kalyvas sheds light on the complexity of the defining violence:
Though it may be an intuitive concept, violence is a conceptual minefield. As a multifaceted social phenomenon, it can be defined very broadly and stretched way beyond physical violence (Nordstrom and Martin 1992:8). Some distinguish between violence that preserves the social order (‘systemically functional’ violence) and violence that destroys it (‘dysfunctional’ violence) (C. Friedrich1972; Sorel 1921); others take social and economic oppression (or even competition) to be forms of ‘structural’ violence (Braud 1999; Galtung 1975; Ellul 1969:86). Finally, some think that the range of social acts that qualify as violence is so broad as to include any act that results in mental anguish.11
Despite such variations, violence is commonly referred to as ‘behavior designed to inflict physical injury on people or damage to property,’12 or ‘any observable interaction in the course of which persons or objects are seized or physically damaged in spite of resistance,’13 or actions ‘intended to shape the behavior of a targeted audience by altering the expected value of particular actions.’14 As such, the physical dimension remains the primary focus of violence.
Donatella della Porta builds her definition of political violence from this dominant position. Porta says, ‘Political violence consists of those repertoires of collective action that involve great physical force and cause damage to an adversary to achieve political aims.’15 In this regard, Porta has highlighted two issues: physical force and causing damage to those who are at the receiving end. Porta concludes, ‘political violence, then, is the use of physical force to damage a political adversary.’
While I adopt Porta’s definition for this study, I would like to add two elements to it: that political violence must be acted within the public arena; and that it has to have some legitimacy. Actions that take place within the private sphere, even when they inflict injury and have a political goal cannot be considered as political violence. My conceptualization of public is not drawn from a binary division between private and public, but instead from Hannah Arendt’s explanation of politics. Arendt distinguishes between three realms: ‘The private; the public-political, which is the civil realm where all citizens have equal rights; and the “social”, where people may freely come together with or exclude whomever they wish.’16 It is well to bear in mind that the conventional conceptualization of private-public domain is now in flux because not only private actors are engaged in the public realms, which has always been the case, but because the state which traditionally used to remain in the public domain is now increasingly inserting itself in the private domain. I am arguing that the political violence has itself to be located within the public-political realm, because I consider that this is the only domain that is explicitly political. As Arendt has explained eloquently, ‘Of all activities necessary and present in human communities, only two are deemed to be political and to constitute what Aristotle called bios politikos, namely action (praxis) and speech (lexis).’17 The political violence is both praxis and lexis.
The second element, legitimacy, is not used in the Weberian sense of the term but is based on a revision of Weber’s notion. In my formulation, there are three levels of legitimacy with regard to political violence. The first level of legitimacy is that it has taken place within the public domain. The action has inserted itself into the public domain and established its presence. The second level of legitimacy is about recognition: through either positive or negative recognition. Positive recognition, in this instance, is not based on its goal, effectiveness, or its quality, but only by virtue of ‘owning’ it. When it is authorized by an institution, whether the state or an open or clandestine group, it gains positive legitimacy. Conversely, it can gain legitimacy by negative responses, from the state or other institutions. The state’s response to confront it is an example of negative legitimacy. The third level of legitimacy of political violence is that it is considered justified, even if partially. When public violence with a political objective is committed and agents other than those who committed the violent action recognize to some extent that it is, at least partially, justified, it gains the legitimacy as a political violence.
Political violence and state
It is against the backdrop of the legitimacy question that we must bring the issue of state into the discussion. The state, as we are aware, holds the legitimate monopoly of violence: ‘A state is a human community that claims the monopoly of legitimate use of ...
