Communal Violence, Forced Migration and the State: Gujarat since 2002, examines the forced displacement in Gujarat. It draws on extensive field research and government documents to examine the politics of forced migration and relief and rehabilitation in order to examine a state that the Hindu nationalist government characterized as a model of good governance. Displacement is used as an analytical lens to understand the larger polity and its limits. It thus builds on Hannah Arendt’s argument of displacement being symptomatic of what ails the state. In our times of chronic mobility and rise of majoritarian politics, this argument has implications beyond Gujarat, India.
Sanjeevini Badigar Lokhande teaches Foreign Governments and Politics and Research Methods as Adjunct Faculty at Temple. She received her PhD in 2012 from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. She taught as Assistant Professor at the University of Mumbai for 4 years. Communal Violence, Forced Migration and the State: Gujarat Since 2002 published by Cambridge University Press in 2015 is her first book. While her research has a strong empirical focus, as in her first book, she centrally engages with larger theoretical questions.