Communalism in Modern India: A Historiographical Overview

I am extremely thankful to the Andhra Pradesh History Congress for having given me the opportunity to deliver the presidential address for the Historiography section. I have chosen communalism as my theme. There is a background to this and I would like to start my address by sharing it with you. I grew up in a traditional, average, secure but not affluent, middle-class Brahmin family in a small town of North India, Uttar Pradesh  to be precise. Much of what I later came to understand as communalism was very much in the air I breathed and the general social landscape. There were some general views about Muslims which were part of my inherited commonsense knowledge and had been internalised by me as part of my socialisation and growing up. Our house was located in a Muslim locality and we were surrounded by Muslim houses and shops.