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Literary Review
Anatomy of a riot
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The Deadly Ethnic Riot, based on a number of case studies from different countries, looks at the social psychology of riots, says SUDHANSHU RANADE.
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WIDESPREAD and deep-rooted hostility between two communities is necessary for a riot. Though the actual killings and atrocities are everywhere the work of a few young men, untended or carefully stoked hostility ensures that a large number of people including officials and politicians are willing to condone the violence, explain it away. Because of this rewards are high and risks low. Such a situation is therefore inherently combustible and it is only a matter of time before the next riot flares up. On a risk prone occasion (like a religious festival or procession) and in risk prone cities or neighbourhoods, certainly, but also in the wake of sudden provocation — the basic function of which is to serve as a signal for crowds to "spontaneously act in unison". Against this background it makes more sense to see the Hindu-Muslim riots that take place in different places at different times as being one big riot, each individual outburst being merely an episode.
Each episode is vicious, a person may be made to watch as his family members are killed one by one before he too is put to death. How is such sadism to be reconciled with the supposed normality of the persons who do the actual rioting? Well, since organisers at the national level know that people do not like to kill other people in cold blood, they help create ever more opportunities for them to do it when their blood is boiling. This is their basic function, to increase combustibility, to create ever more hostility at the macro level. The attacking side is encouraged to see itself as engaging in "defensive" action though as a matter of fact it is always the target group that gets victimised. Most of those killed are Muslims, so are most of those who get arrested.
The role of local leadership is limited to inflaming passions if and when they appear to subside. But not much is to be gained by trying to counter the rumours that are set in circulation for this purpose. People believe these rumours because they need to believe them in order to justify their actions. An administration that really wants to deter or stop a riot would do better to deploy preventive force. This alone can deter rioters, the thought of punishment hardly ever does. Rioters know all too well that hardly anyone ever gets punished afterwards.
Rioters do not simply run amuck. Only their humanity is blinded by hate, not their reason. They are risk averse and calculatedly pursue a strategy that allows them to do a lot of killing without themselves being killed. If they meet too much resistance at one place, they retreat, regroup and strike elsewhere. They are most at their ease when police are present but do not intervene, rather than in situations where police are absent altogether — unless they know that this absence is deliberate.
The overall object is to humble the targeted group, to intimidate it into submission. In the process a great deal of lasting damage is done even to the group which has the upper hand. Besides, instead of eventually leading to the establishment of a new equilibrium in which the target group is "put in its proper place", the civil war may continue indefinitely, particularly when the target group has powerful friends who are beyond reach; friends who are just as willing as the leaders of the dominant group to sacrifice the well being of those they "defend".
This is the main message for the general public in India. But this insightful book also serves a much wider purpose, based as it is on a careful review of a large number of case studies taken from many different countries. The only problem is that its contents have been arranged topically to facilitate analysis of various aspects of a riot by social psychologists within a comparative framework, rather than in the form of case studies of individual riots. The result is that the book will have difficulty holding the attention of its readers. It will test their patience. But those who persevere will reap a rich reward.
The Deadly Ethnic Riot, Donald L. Horowitz, OUP, 2001, Rs. 595.
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