The Burden of Security

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2651986
AutoresVera Lazzaretti (0000-0002-5621-189X, University of Oslo, autor de correspondencia)
Año2020
Volumen4
Número1
Páginas74-93
Fecha de publicación2020-03-08
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJournal of Extreme Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2535-3241 • E-ISSN: 2535-3241
EditorialUniversity of Oslo Library (PUBLISHER • NO)
DOI10.5617/jea.7526
OpenAlexW3010802184
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas12

After the Babri mosque in the northern Indian city of Ayodhya was destroyed in 1992 by mobs of 'volunteers' mobilised by Hindu nationalist forces, a deed of license between the Uttar Pradesh Sunni Central Waqf Board and the Uttar Pradesh state government was signed. Through this license a portion of land in the Gyan Vapi mosque premises in Banaras (Varanasi) was handed over to the state for security purposes. The Gyan Vapi mosque is less than fifty meters from the Kashi Vishvanath temple, a notable Hindu pilgrimage destination. Although at the centre of security issues for centuries, the mosque has been a target of the Hindu nationalist movement that since the 1980s has aimed at the 'liberation' of allegedly originally Hindu places of worship. By analysing the evolution of security discourses in local Hindi newspapers and drawing on ethnography of everyday policing at the Kashi Vishvanath-Gyan Vapi compound, this article discusses moral frictions involved in securing a contested place of worship and argues that scopes and objects of securitisation can shift. In the case I discuss, the predominately Hindu police are shown to play an ambiguous role, caught as they are between their duty to secure the disputed mosque and their likely adherence to the increasingly dominant Hindu nationalist discourse. In overcoming these moral frictions, police through their everyday activity contribute to the shift of the object of securitisation from the mosque to the more 'acceptable' temple

Ancient history · Archaeology · Buddhism · Communalism · Hindu nationalism · Hinduism · Nationalism · Pilgrimage · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Worship · Gender Studies · Global Security and Public Health · History · Law · Philosophy · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East · Religious studies · South Asian Studies and Conflicts