Silence, self-censorship and compromise as ordinary violence: An ethnographic portrait of a Muslim businessmen in the Hindu pilgrim economy

Abstract

In this paper I draw on longitudinal research in Banaras conducted intermittently between 2014 and 2024 to discuss the progressive normalisation of everyday, banal forms of violence in the lives of ordinary Muslims, precisely during a time of resurgence and entrenchment of majoritarian politics. To do that, I take a micro-scale ethnographic approach and trace a portrait of one of my longstanding interlocutors, whom I call Karim. I met Karim for the first time in 2014, when he was a young man in in twenties, running a family business and selling house furniture in a shop located near the Kashi Vishvanath temple and Gyanvapi mosque compound in central Banaras. At that time, Karim proudly exhibited his Muslim identity, often sporting the traditional skull topi and a long kurta and opening his shop for mosque goers to deposit their belonging before entering the mosque for namaaz, especially on Fridays. Initially, he would hardly talk to me openly about the tempe-mosque controversies and it took a while for him to trust me. Through the years, we became closer, though his intermittent silence remain an important feature of our ethnographic relationship, while the shop and to some extent his persona went through a progressive makeover, following substantial redevelopment of the area for the construction of the Kashi Vishvanath Corridor. His shop now is extremely successful but provides exclusively lockers and offerings for Hindu pilgrims and is a microcosm of the booming local pilgrim economy, while Karim does not accept online payment by pilgrims because this would disclose his real name. The paper argues that Karim’s silence, self-censorship and compromise make his life but they are also features of the ordinary violence experienced and digested by minorities in Hindu nationalist India.