-Scroll.in An excerpt from the introduction to Yadav’s new book, ‘Making Sense Of Indian Democracy: Theory as Practice’. That was foreshadowed by Congress’ victory in the wake of the Sikh massacre and followed by Modi’s victories in the Gujarat assembly elections, held in the wake of the anti-Muslim Pogrom of 2002. We should have known about the dark side of Indian democracy. At any rate, we are no longer now looking at...

-The Hindu Community leaders and democratically elected office holders must play a key role in preventing dangerous rumours In 1984, just as Delhi was engulfed by a Pogrom against the Sikhs, the city was rife with the rumour that they had poisoned the entire water supply. Such rumours are not new. For centuries, European Jews were falsely accused of poisoning wells during wars, epidemics or civic unrest. Late 18th century Paris, witness...

-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...

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 Hindu Forgiveness can play a reparative role provided it is seen as complementary to justice, not a substitute for it Post-Partition, India has witnessed innumerable acts of collective violence of which three clearly stand out as the most barbaric: the Nellie massacre in Assam in 1983; the horrific slaughter of Sikhs in Delhi in 1984; and the diabolical Pogrom in Gujarat in 2002. Need for retributive justice No society that calls itself civilised...