Providing original ethnographic accounts from sites of violence in South Asia it:

- map the contemporary discourse on Hindu-Muslim violence and focus on the causes of communal violence as well as its long-term consequences;

- situate the nation-state within the incidents of violence-variously termed ethnic, communal and everyday violence - that simultaneously frame and challenge the authority of the state;

- locate the current discussion on violence and the state in Pakistan, and provide a general thematic overview of religion and state institutions in Pakistan;

- discuss the specific locality-based socio-economic conditions that contribute to violence;

- expand various categories of violence to present a South Asian perspective in regard to the current western discourse on `global terrorism'.