Religion and Violence in South Asia

Religion and Violence in South Asia is a Social Science course taught by Vishnupad.

This course satisfies Division I requirements.

Course Description
In this course we will focus on the processes of politicization of various religions in South Asia and its participation the production of collective violence. We will begin with the colonial state apparatus' role in the formation of relatively rigid communitarian identities through governmental processes, and engage with the political history of communal conflict through the colonial and post-colonial period. A crucial component of the course will involve the engagement with the 1947 Partition narratives of violence, and the practices of memorialization and forgetting that has plagued the post-colonial South Asia. We will also substantially engage the Sinhala-Tamil conflict in Sri Lanka through the colonial period to the contemporary moment.