Collective action and community : public arenas and the emergence of communalism in North India

In this book, Sandria Freitag examines one of the central problems of modern Indian history-the Hindu-Muslim conflict-with
new and provocative insight. She challenges long-standing interpretations by defining this conflict as a developing social process
involving complex and contradictory participation by numerous social groups, not simply "Hindu" or "Muslim," in highly
specific local contexts bound together in a changing institutional order. The role of the colonial state and of new systems of
communication are linked to the articulation of ideology that reassembles pre-modern symbols into new constellations of meaning.
Focusing on collective activities staged in northern India during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Freitag traces the
antecedents of modern communalism to widespread popular participation in expressions of local community through public processions, festivals, and riots. As a study of the social context of ideology and its actualization in concrete, violent social
conflict, the book makes a major contribution toward explaining the partition of India. By placing her analysis in a comparative context through an extended discussion of similar developments in early modern Europe, the author also adds to our understanding of the colonial legacy in shaping the relationship among individual, community, and the state.