Communal Riots in India STEVEN I WILKINSON What causes communal riots in contemporary India? In my book Votes and Violence (2005), I argue that politicians both cause them and, more importantly, have the power to prevent them, through their control of the state governments responsible for law and order.1 Riots in India, I argue, are the product of incentives at the local level and the state level. At the local level, I argue that the most important cause of riots is the intensity of electoral competition. Where political competition is most intense,
