COMMUNAL CONFLICT AND THE NOSTALGIC IMAGINATION IN INDIA

The recent critique and outright dismissal of the concept and practice of secularism has dot been informed by sustained historical and socio logical analysis of Indian society. Critics of secularism have taken t heir theoretical and Indological abstractions too seriously and have p aid scant attention to the complex relationship between ideologies and changing social structures and institutions. Their one-dimensional fo cus on religion per se has obscured the structural similarities betwee n communal violence and other types of sectarian and ethnic conflicts.