ABSTRACT
‘Violence’ straddles the lawful and unlawful, the legitimate and the ‘illegitimate’, domination and resistance, injustice and justice, order and chaos. It takes many forms — the violence of holocaust, war and peacekeeping on the one hand, and the violence of normal times on the other, including violence against sexual minorities, persons convicted of crime, political suspects, all persons who are not men, and down the scale of graded inequality in the caste system, to name a few instances. Within the violence of normal times, it is useful to delineate specific, overt practices of violence as well as the subterranean forms that are embodied in systematic practices of exclusion, through neglect, silence, non-recognition, or denial of access, targeted at particular classes. These practices embody the interlocking of violence with discrimination. This interlocking is also visible in overt forms of collective violence.
