Civil Society and its Impact on Curbing Communal Violence: A Study on the 2013 Muzaffarnagar Riots

Abstract

Communal riots are not new to India, but the Muzaffarnagar communal riots in 2013 breached the scholarly wisdom of the past. The riots did not follow any of the precedents of wisdom established by scholars. Comprehending the Muzaffarnagar riots using a theoretical framework is extremely difficult because no single theory can embrace all the variables of the Muzaffarnagar riots. Muzaffarnagar riots are the culmination of all the social, political and economic events that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. This article attempts to understand Muzaffarnagar using three major theoretical frameworks: Pual Brass‘s Institutional riot system, Varshney’s Civil society theory and Wilkinson’s Electoral incentive theory. Muzaffarnagar riots in 2013 culminated all the social, political, and economic changes that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. This paper tried to gain insight into the Muzaffarnagar riots using the local sociological context.