By advocating fearlessness, invoking a sense of responsibility and discoursing at an ethical moral plane, Gandhi prioritised his ideological fight against the ideology that had created the circumstances in which violence of this kind took place. He understood, from the very beginning, that the hegemony of communal ideology was partially a reflection of the socio economic structure of that society. And this was quite significant because his own earlier understanding of communalism was not as focused as it was beginning to look like now. This makes his efforts at reconciliation a matter of not only historical importance but also of significant contemporary relevance. It is here that the question of communal violence becomes quite crucial. Quite often, historians and social scientists equate communal riots with communalism. They are however not the same thing- neither analytically nor in their nature. Violence in the form of the communal riot itself is not the cause of communalism; rather it is the product. Violence can certainly be a reflective index of the communalisation of society but there can be communalisation without any violence. Therefore, escalated violence and its aggressive insensitivity indicate the intensity and depth of ideological penetration that has taken place. A discourse on violence without taking cognisance of the ideological apparatus is to naively ignore the entire process that went into making that violence. Communalism, given its ideological apparatus, legitimises, sanctions and creates occasions for violence. And it is here that one needs to see that the reconciliation efforts should not merely attempt at stopping violence but try and critique the ideology that produces such violence.