An expert on communal riots says the country may well be witnessing the start of a larger pogrom.
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Why India’s Muslims Are in Grave Danger
An expert on communal riots says the country may well be witnessing the start of a larger pogrom.
By
Ravi Agrawal, the editor in chief of
Foreign Policy.
Security personnel patrol a street following sectarian riots over India's new citizenship law in New Delhi, India, on Feb. 28, 2020. Xavier Galiana/AFP/Getty Images
March 2, 2020, 4:04 PM
India has been jolted by the deadliest communal violence in New Delhi in decades. The fighting
began on Sunday, Feb. 23—just before U.S. President Donald Trump
arrived in the country for meetings with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi—and quickly escalated into mass riots, with Hindu mobs targeting Muslim homes in the city’s northeast. At least 45 people were killed—mostly Muslims.
Ashutosh Varshney, a Brown University professor and
author of the prize-winning
Ethnic Conflict and Civic Life: Hindus and Muslims in India, believes last week’s riots in Delhi bear some of the hallmarks of an organized pogrom. India has been there before: In 2002, in Gujarat, when Modi was the state’s chief minister, more than 1,000 people were killed in religious riots. Most were Muslims. While Modi was later cleared of wrongdoing by the country’s judiciary, critics say that he could have done much more to prevent the attacks. And in 1984, again in Delhi, an estimated 3,000 Sikhs were targeted and killed after Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. In both cases, experts say, riots could not have been conducted without some complicity on the part of the police.
Varshney believes last week’s deadly clashes could be repeated in other parts of the country—and that Muslims are particularly vulnerable. Here is a transcript of Foreign Policy’s interview with Varshney, lightly edited for clarity.
Ravi Agrawal: There’s been a bit of debate about whether the violence in Delhi last week should be defined as a riot or as something more serious—a pogrom. Can you explain the difference?
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Ashutosh Varshney: Pogroms are a special class of riots when it’s no longer simply a clash between two mobs or groups. Instead, the police are siding with one group either by looking away or by abetting and sometimes even directly participating in the violence. The key difference between riots and pogroms lies in the behavior of the state—through its police. The term was born in tsarist Russia when pogroms were launched against Jews.
RA: Given what we know now, how would you classify the violence in Delhi?
AV: On the first day and night—Sunday, Feb. 23—we saw two mobs going at each other. There were deaths on both sides. But on the second and third day, the partisanship of the police became clear. A mosque, a Muslim shrine, and Muslim homes and shops were attacked. The police did not respond to calls for help. Logs suggest a high volume of those calls came from predominantly Muslim parts of northeast Delhi. But the police failed to show up. Hindu mobs then attacked with abandon.
The second part is more direct participation. There are videos, in particular
one which shows young Muslim men being hit by a Hindu mob. And the cops are asking the fallen and beaten Muslim men to sing the national anthem—as they’re being hit. That is quite egregious.
But the more significant evidence thus far is of the police simply looking away and not responding to Muslim pleas for help as homes, places of worship, and commercial enterprises were attacked with impunity.
RA: The fact that all of this happened in New Delhi, the capital city of India, is significant.
