pt. 1. Arguments and theories. Introduction -- Why civil society? Ethnic conflict and the existing traditions of inquiry -- pt. 2. The national level. Competing national imaginations -- Hindu-Muslim riots, 1950-1995: the national picture -- pt. 3. Local variations: Aligarh and Calicut: internal and external cleavages. Aligarh and Calicut: civic life and its political foundations -- Vicious and virtuous circles -- pt. 3. Local variations: Hyderabad and Lucknow: elite integration versus mass integration. Princely resistance to civil society -- Hindu nationalists as bridge builders? -- pt. 3. Local variations: Ahmedabad and Surat: how civic institutions decline. Gandhi and civil society -- Decline of a civic order and communal violence -- Endogeneity? Of causes and consequences -- pt. 4. Conclusions. Ethnic conflict, the state, and civil society.