Spatial variation in the "Muslim vote" in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, 2014

Susewind R, Dhattiwala R. Spatial variation in the "Muslim vote" in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, 2014. Economic & Political Weekly. 2014;49(39):99-110.In this paper, we propose to reconcile the controversial debate on Muslim "vote banks" in India by shifting the spatial focus from state-wide assessments to the level of constituencies. At the example of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general elections, and using an innovative booth-level ecological inference model, we show that Muslims might indeed vote en bloc for or against certain parties, but they tend to do so in a much more localised way than previously assumed. While public Muslim support for the BJP did not translate into electoral support in most places, there are important exceptions to this trend – and at least in the case of Uttar Pradesh, their support for competing parties followed a fairly complex spatial pattern. We further explore this spatial variation in Muslim vote pattern by looking at the moderating impact of minority concentration, violent communal history, and ethnic co-ordination and conclude with a call for more disaggregated research

Next-door strangers: explaining ‘neighbourliness’ between Hindus and Muslims in a riot-affected city

Abstract: One of the factors demonstrated by racial or religious segregation is people’s preference for residential homophily – the tendency of like-minded people to gather in the same places. In societies disposed to ethnic conflict, homophily serves the added purpose of safety in numbers. When such conflict societies face rapid urbanization, escalated land prices accompanying the rapidly shrinking urban space veto the preference for homophily: people are unable to relocate to neighbourhoods of choice and find themselves restricted to living in mixed neighbourhoods. How do these neighbourhoods survive; what mechanisms generate cohesive neighbourly relations; and, indeed, what constitutes being a neighbour? This paper is based on previous and ongoing ethnography in heterogeneous neighbourhoods located in three municipal wards of Ahmedabad (western India), with varying histories of ethnic violence. Findings suggest: (1) spatial proximity is essential but not sufficient for positive neighbourly relations. People were more likely to develop neighbourly relations with people whom they encountered along daily street routes or with spatially distant co-ethnics rather than with residents in spatially proximate households (2) Hindus and Muslims collaborated in constructing superficial friendliness in public as opposed to intergroup antipathy displayed in private. Superficial friendliness with contiguous households served to assuage antipathy and ensure neighbourhood collective efficacy, as a means of survival in mixed neighbourhoods facing imminent violence, rather than explain the occurrence of violence (or peace) itself. • Dr Raheel Dhattiwala, Postdoctoral research fellow, International Centre for Muslim and non-Muslim Understanding, University of South Australi

Spatial variation in the “Muslim vote” in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, 2014 (replication data)

Susewind R, Dhattiwala R. Spatial variation in the “Muslim vote” in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, 2014 (replication data). Bielefeld University; 2014.This dataset contains replication data for our paper by the same name first published in Economic & Political Weekly 49(39), 2014. In this paper, we propose to reconcile the controversial debate on Muslim "vote banks" in India by shifting the spatial focus from state-wide assessments to the level of constituencies. At the example of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general elections, and using an innovative booth-level ecological inference model, we show that Muslims might indeed vote en bloc for or against certain parties, but they tend to do so in a much more localised way than previously assumed. While public Muslim support for the BJP did not translate into electoral support in most places, there are important exceptions to this trend – and at least in the case of Uttar Pradesh, their support for competing parties followed a fairly complex spatial pattern. We further explore this spatial variation in Muslim vote pattern by looking at the moderating impact of minority concentration, violent communal history, and ethnic co-ordination and conclude with a call for more disaggregated research

Spatial variation in the "Muslim vote" in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, 2014 (reprint)

Susewind R, Dhattiwala R. Spatial variation in the "Muslim vote" in Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh, 2014 (reprint). Internationales Asienforum. 2014;45(3-4):353-381.In this paper, we propose to reconcile the controversial debate on Muslim "vote banks" in India by shifting the spatial focus from state-wide assessments to the level of constituencies. At the example of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh in the 2014 general elections, and using an innovative booth-level ecological inference model, we show that Muslims might indeed vote en bloc for or against certain parties, but they tend to do so in a much more localised way than previously assumed. While public Muslim support for the BJP did not translate into electoral support in most places, there are important exceptions to this trend – and at least in the case of Uttar Pradesh, their support for competing parties followed a fairly complex spatial pattern. We further explore this spatial variation in Muslim vote pattern by looking at the moderating impact of minority concentration, violent communal history, and ethnic co-ordination and conclude with a call for more disaggregated research

Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat, 2002: political logic, spatial configuration, and communal cooperation

This thesis uses a mixed methods approach to investigate the different levels of Hindu-Muslim violence in Gujarat (western India) in 2002 when at least a thousand Muslims were killed. An original dataset of killings is compiled to analyse macrospatial variation in the violence across towns and rural areas of Gujarat. Data collected from 21 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Ahmedabad city is used to investigate microspatial variation across three neighbourhoods with varying levels of violence.Macrospatial analysis discusses the link between political authority and its capacity to instigate ethnic violence as a response to electoral calculations and identifies the mechanisms by which violence against Muslims was orchestrated by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Ethnographic findings demonstrate the importance of ecological strategies adopted by attackers and targets during the course of attack and urge a re-examination of the intuitive association of spatial proximity with greater interethnic contact. Findings also reveal methods of enforcement used by legitimate and illegitimate institutions of a peaceful slum neighbourhood in resolving commitment problems of cooperation. Finally, the thesis examines the aftermath of the violence, more specifically a political phenomenon of Muslims of Gujarat supporting the BJP nine years after the brutal violence.Methodologically, the main contribution of this thesis is in bridging the quantitative and ethnographic traditions in the sociology of ethnic violence to make possible the linking, and disentangling, of macrolevel risk factors associated with violence from microlevel factors. Findings of the thesis hopefully provide a better understanding of ethnic violence in multi-ethnic democracies and a roadmap of policy-making for India as it continues to struggle with ethnic strife.This thesis is not currently available via ORA