This book explores the organic lives of popular Sufi shrines in contemporary Northwest India. Gur-sharan Singh's play Curfew beautifully illustrates the mental as well as tem-poral limits imposed on the social and political landscape of Punjab during these decades. There always seemed to be a state of curfew since the streets remained deserted and the mar-kets closed by 7 pm on most days. We grew up trying to sneak out from our homes only to be pushed back by the men in uniform who patrolled the streets of urban Punjab. I was six years old in 1984 and along with others of my generation carry a deep imprint of Operation Bluestar and the violence that perpetuated a decade of gruesome kill-ings of innocent Sikhs and Hindus in Punjab. I was born in a time of hate, violence and rising tide of communalism in the 1980s and 1990s. As someone who grew up through some of the most terrible times in Indian history in a conservative Hin-du family with a Rashtriya Swayam-sevak Sangh (RSS) background in the small border town of Abohar in Punjab, this victory poses more questions than answers. L ike many other Indians, the results of the recent Lok Sabha elections have bewildered me too as well as the promise of development that accom-panied it. On the contrary, the scars of physical and emotional violence which are generational and deep-rooted will keep reproducing selective memories of victimhood and hate until we unbundle the legacy of violence in India. The opportunities for social change will be limited if we allow ourselves to be convinced that development is the panacea for all ills. Both portray a selective reading of social processes.

One sociopolitical philosophy in India speaks of forgetting and the other emphasises selective remembering.

Otko have selective social amnesia