As discussions and protests swirl around the United States following the recent Grand Jury decisions in several cases of police violence, Gyanendra Pandey’s discussion of violence, specifically in relation to South Asian nations, is applicable.
There is a violence written into the making and continuation of contemporary political arrangements, and into the production and reproduction of majorities and minorities, which I have called routine violence. The present study is concerned with the routine violence of our history and politics. It is about the enabling conditions of what is commonly seen as violence, but suggests that these conditions – political stipulations, history writing, the construction of majorities and minorities, the education of marginalized and subordinated groups and assemblages – are themselves shot through with violence (Routine Violence: Nations, Fragments, Histories 1).
It’s merely unlimited, undifferentiated