The Banality of Violence: Arendt, Partition and the Walled City of Lahore in 1947

Abstract

Applying Arendt’s concept of the "banality of evil," this paper argues that extreme violence in 1947 became a standardized, daily routine for ordinary citizens. Perpetrators entered a state of moral "thoughtlessness" a psychological condition in which individuals deliberately suspended their independent ethical judgment and adopted popular political slogans to shield themselves from guilt. Violence was stripped of its moral weight and re-framed as "instrumental violence": a practical, cold-blooded tool designed to achieve specific material and ideological ends. By treating the eviction of neighbors as a necessary, functional step toward building the new nation-state, everyday residents neutralized their moral reservations and transformed intimate street corners into operational sites of purgation. Ultimately, this study reveals how localized criminal networks and ordinary neighbors successfully aligned their personal greed, class resentments, and desires for real estate with the grand narrative of state formation. Supported by local police complicity and systematic asset seizures, these actors proved that mass atrocity does not require extraordinary hatred. Instead, as Arendt’s theory illuminates, the catastrophic success of Lahore’s demographic cleansing relied on the frightening ease with which normal people can turn off their critical conscience, rationalize cruelty as work, and reduce horrific acts of violence into a banal, unthinking daily routine.

Keywords: Banality, Violence, Arendt, Partition, Walled City, Lahore