Communal violence (sometimes intercommunal violence) refers to a situation where violence is perpetrated across ethnic lines, and victims are chosen based upon ethnic group membership. The term communal violence is commonly used in South Asia, to describe those incidents where conflict between ethnic communities results in massacres.
Communal violence, as seen in South Asia, typically takes the form of mutual aggression, in which members of all involved ethnic groups both perpetrate violence and serve as its victims. Genocide is a sub-category of communal violence, in which the participating ethnic groups can be assigned mutually exclusive roles as either perpetrators or victims of violence.
Famous quotes containing the words communal and/or violence:
“Limbo is the place. In Limbo one has natural happiness without the beatific vision; no harps; no communal order; but wine and conversation and imperfect, various humanity. Limbo for the unbaptized, for the pious heathen, the sincere sceptic.”
—Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966)
“Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people’s crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translate into concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)