Fighting for faith and nation

Description

The ethnic and religious violence that characterizes the late twentieth century calls for new ways of thinking and writing about politics. Listening to the voices of people who experience political violence - either as victims or as perpetrators - gives new insights into both the sources of violent conflict and the potential for its resolution. Going beyond such easy labels as "fundamentalism" and "terrorism," Mahmood shows how complex and multifaceted the human experience of political violence actually is. Drawing on her extensive interviews and conversations with Sikh militants, she presents their accounts of the human rights abuses they suffer in India as well as their explanations of the philosophical tradition of martyrdom and meaningful death in the Sikh faith. While demonstrating how divergent the worldviews of participants in a conflict can be, Fighting for Faith and Nation gives reason to hope that our essential common humanity may provide grounds for a pragmatic resolution of conflicts like the one in Punjab, which has claimed tens of thousands of lives in the past fifteen years.

Subjects

Series Statement

• Series in contemporary ethnography

Other Editions

• Fighting for faith and nation: dialogues with Sikh militantsUniversity of Pennsylvania Press1997-01-01
• Fighting for Faith and NationUniversity of Pennsylvania Press2010-01-01