-The Tribune The recent Violence that consumed Delhi forces us to confront a horrific if familiar truth: media-constructed ‘enemies’ eventually turn into flesh-and-blood people. The pogrom against the Sikhs in 1984, as the work of academics like the Oxford-based Pritam Singh reminds us, was preceded by what Singh termed “deeply embedded institutional communalism” in the coverage of events like Operation Bluestar and Indira Gandhi’s funeral by government-run media All India Radio and...

-The Tribune Political psychologist Ashis Nandy, a pioneer of Indian critical thought, has over the years delved into areas other than routine academic concerns. Honorary Fellow at Centre for Studies of Developing Societies, New Delhi, Nandy is currently working on genocide. In an interview to The Tribune, he speaks of the psychology of rioters, the anatomy of Violence and challenges of identity politics. Excerpts: * Delhi just witnessed a riot. What makes...

As body count due to Delhi riots (some call it pogrom) rise above 45, it is essential to look at the official data related to communal incidents in the country. It is from the annual report of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MoHA), one gets information about the number of communal incidents in different years, apart from the number of persons injured and killed in those incidents. There is one...

-The Telegraph Experts slam Delhi police response New Delhi: Neutrality, prevention, prompt containment, confidence-building, protection of religious places, accountability of officials and prosecution of rioters — the Amit Shah-headed Union home ministry’s guidelines on tackling communal Violence cover it all. But the Delhi police, who report directly to Shah, flouted most of these “Guidelines on Communal Harmony” during last week’s rioting that killed at least 48 people, according to eyewitnesses, security experts including...

-The Indian Express India’s citizenry is well and truly into a battle for constitutional values, which must be fought, most of all, with non-violent determination and vigour. In the historical scale of rioting, where do the recent Delhi riots belong? And what is their larger political significance? The first question is statistical. During early to mid-1990s, Steven Wilkinson, now teaching at Yale, and I, set up a database for all recorded Hindu-Muslim riots...