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:
“A communal horse anybody can ride.”
—Chinese proverb.
“We New Yorkers see more death and violence than most soldiers do, grow a thick chitin on our backs, grimace like a rat and learn to do a disappearing act. Long ago we outgrew the need to be blowhards about our masculinity; we leave that to the Alaskans and Texans, who have more time for it.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)