ABSTRACT
The “communalism” has a peculiarly South Asian derivation, although it is used to describe a phenomenon that is certainly not limited to South Asia in its application. Even in this task, however, the word “communalism” generally does a poor job. Nationalist writers, on the other hand, naturally rejected the racist implications of this definition of communalism, but nevertheless adopted its corollary: for them, communalism is the opposite of nationalism, a corruption for which the uneducated and backward masses, and the unscrupulous leaders who used them, were responsible. As Brass argues, the persistence of communalism in India is tied to the competing ideologies of secularism and Hindu nationalism, both of which require the threat of Hindu-Muslim violence to justify their call for a strong state. Secularism has been an ideology of a strong centralized state that has defined itself in such a way as to place the Indian state not at a remove from religion, communalism, and Hindu-Muslim issues.
