Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in PakistanBeing part of a violent community in revolt can be addictive--it can be fun. This book offers a fascinating inside look at present-day political violence in Pakistan through a historical ethnography of the Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM), one of the most remarkable and successful religious nationalist movements in postcolonial South Asia. The MQM has mobilized much of the "migrant" (Muhajir) population in Karachi and other urban centers in southern Pakistan and has fomented large-scale ethnic-religious violence. Oskar Verkaaik argues that urban youth see it as an irresistible opportunity for "fun." Drawing on both anthropological fieldwork, including participatory observation among political militants, and historical analyses of state formation, nation-building, and the ethnicization of Islam since 1947, he provides an absorbing and important contribution to theoretical debates about political--religious and nationalist--violence. |
From inside the book
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... Hindu nationalist movement in India or several Islamist move- ments in the Muslim world . Moreover , the party was involved in large - scale incidents of ethnic - religious violence and has more recently been branded as a " terrorist ...
... Hindus and Sikhs traveled to India , and even more Muslims went in the opposite direction . A large portion of these migrants came from the eastern part of the Punjab and settled in the Pakistani part of that province , where they ...
... Hindu nationalist movement in India and possibly several Islamist move- ments in parts of the Muslim world — namely its ambiguous relationship to a political culture I will call postcolonial state nationalism . This is a far from ...
... Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena movement in Bombay . Hansen focuses explicitly on the notion of masculinity as it is played out in the movement's rhetoric and recruitment strategies . In his view , young Hindu men seek to " recuperate ...
... Hindu nationalist movement does not simply reflect the dynamics of caste politics in India ( Hansen 1999 : 17 ) . Present - day nationalist movements certainly do em- power groups that were previously marginalized , but these groups do ...