ABSTRACT
The social sciences strive to render intelligible a complex localsituation occurring at a given moment, but we find that historydoes not proceed in a straight line and is not a cumulative process. From 1990 to 1994, I spent a great deal of time studying the relationship between Muslims and Hindus in a village in South India. The result of this fieldwork was a book, At the Confluence of Two Rivers.1 The picture that emerged then was of a fairly harmonious relationship between Muslims and Hindus, a fact that made it all the more difficult to accept the politically motivated carnage by organized groups in Gujarat in February-March 2002. After this pogrom, the past appears like a veritable utopia.
