Contentious violence against minorities can yield major electoral gains for the aggressors’ party.

Evidence

For incremental effects, India’s militant Hindus provide remarkable examples. The campaign to destroy the Uttar Pradesh mosque of Babri Masjid, for example, helped bring the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to national power. The actual destruction of Babri Masjid during a Hindu demonstration of 1992 drummed up support for the party; electoral gains meant that the BJP actually led national coalition governments in 1996 and 1998, with the second government lasting until 2004. In Gujarat, government-backed Hindu attacks on Muslims brought the BJP a landslide victory in the 2002 elections. Although neither the national nor the Gujarati government succeeded in implementing religious rule, the BJP’s rise weakened the already threatened position of Muslims within the Indian regime. — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1334

Categorization

• SEED: India as a case study testing the reader’s asymmetry: BJP’s majority-group politicization uses state capacity and legitimation as ‘rights defense’ against Muslims.
• ADDENDUM: Could support ‘On Sacrifice’ tangent re: majoritarian violence as ritualized collective action that elites weaponize — but more directly it evidences dominant-group politicization channeled through electoral institutions.
• QUESTION: Does Tilly anywhere note that majority-group violence gets absorbed/depoliticized differently than minority resistance in a high-capacity democracy? This passage hints at the asymmetry the reader wants to test.
• XREF: Bears directly on the reader’s core hypothesis: state legitimacy absorbs minority contention as law-breaking while absorbing dominant-group violence as electoral/defensive politics. — connects to: Electoral democracy can persist amid rampant police and gang violence — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 518; Participation in racial violence could directly launch political careers — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project: A New American Origin…, 849; Heightened political emotions can be captured by party cartels — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization…, 27 (+1 more)
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 1334

Broader Connections

• Anti-Muslim racism intensified and became a deliberate GOP electoral strategy. #exemplifies (0.90) — Sahar F. Aziz, The Racial Muslim, 853
• Heightened political emotions can be captured by party cartels #exemplifies (0.86) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 27
• Participation in racial violence could directly launch political careers #expands (0.78) — Nikole Hannah-Jones et al., The 1619 Project, 849