‘The Once and Future Riot’: On Joe Sacco’s new book (and a conversation with him) on Muzaffarnagar

Joe Sacco’s excellent report from India, The Once and Future Riot, was published by Metropolitan Books in the US last year, but its publication in India has run into trouble. The book was to be distributed by Penguin India and in recent weeks, we have learned that the publishers have decided to withdraw it. Penguin India reportedly sent Sacco a several-page response seeking changes; Sacco has said that these changes included a demand for the removal of a line about the rise of “Hindu hegemony” in the country. (What is Penguin India thinking, if it is thinking at all? To remove a line about the growth and consolidation of “Hindu hegemony” in contemporary India is akin to removing the Himalayas from the subcontinent. After that, there is no there there.)

A puny riot

Sacco is a graphic artist and a journalist of a very high calibre, justly celebrated as a pioneer in the form of comics journalism. His book on Palestine is hailed as a classic. His latest, The Once and Future Riot, is a report on a 2013 riot in Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh that led to tens of thousands of people, mostly Muslims, being turned into refugees. Sixty people, again, mostly Muslims, were killed. Despite the savagery on display, it still needs to be noted that the riot in Muzaffarnagar was a small-scale affair (or, to use Sacco’s terminology, it was a “puny riot”).

The Varshney-Wilkinson dataset on communal violence in India presents evidence of over 1100 religious riots during the period 1950-1995. It is possible that because the riot in Muzaffarnagar district was primarily rural, it didn’t receive the live coverage that was readily available when the large-scale violence took place in Gujarat more than a decade earlier. Sacco visited Muzaffarnagar a year after the riot; it took about ten years to make the detailed, dramatic drawings that are a part of this remarkable book. A drawing, more than a photograph, slows down time: the moment is extended, no longer remaining a mere occurrence, and becomes an encounter to ponder or engage with more fully. It is a form that brings people and events close, and yet frames them and makes them distant in ingenious and critically important ways.

In his arresting drawings, Sacco also puts himself in the frame. He is present at the edges as an observer. In his self-portraits, Sacco distorts his features, his face acquires a rougher, more awkward, even flustered, look. He draws his mouth as if he is hiding a goldfish or two behind his exaggeratedly fleshy lips. (Interestingly, his glasses are always opaque, a doubling of the effect visible in this Cartier-Bresson photo.) With his witty, and sometimes troubled, commentary Sacco makes himself a part of the scene. Unlike those who fight fiercely for their protective versions of reality, the artist is in the middle parsing the narratives on offer. Sacco is often aware that people are telling him lies. In that scenario he appears as a cheerful partisan of the truth. Early in the book, here are his thoughts as his car races into the hinterland, past the women kneading cow dung by the roadside:

An early insight in The Once and Future Riot is the observation that “women are a battlefield upon which class and religious antagonists trample”: this points to the seemingly instigating features of the riot, rooted in the harassment or rape of women and the story that unravels of male youth from rival communities seeking revenge. It also explains the horrible saga of rape that follows. A second insight that the book offers is that of class as an axis of violence. The Muzaffarnagar riots revealed a pattern of devastation meted out not among the moneyed or secure Muslims, who themselves had a role to play in the violence, but against the poor Muslims who toiled as landless farmhands in lands owned by the Jats.

What I appreciate in Sacco’s story is the process through which he, as an outsider, makes sense of the chaos and reaches his conclusions. This makes his narrative one of honest discovery. The other aspect of his storytelling that raises it above conventional journalism is that Sacco poses serious, searching questions that address the larger picture. Midway through the book, he asks: “Dear Reader, do you believe the people? … Do you applaud the impulse that bring The People together to express a grievance or take a stand? … And what if The People are angry? … What if The People aren’t your people and what if their anger appears to be directed at you?” These aren’t empty questions – not least because Sacco has found out during his travels in Muzaffarnagar district that political parties rely on hate and religious polarisation to win electoral battles. Toward the end of the book we learn the following: “In Uttar Pradesh, where the Muslim voting bloc once held sway, Hindus galvanised by the Muzaffarnagar riot delivered decisive victories for the BJP in 2017 and 2022.” The larger issue of the crowd or the mob, and the critical aspects of populism and propaganda in a democracy, is where the book ends. Hence, “the future riot” in the title. It is an ominous note.

In the spirit of Joe Sacco admitting his limitations, I begin by saying that my drawing above, trying to imitate Sacco’s self-portrait, is a failure. But all good. What follows is a summary of an exchange I had with Sacco over email. The Once and Future Riot is dedicated to “the hardworking rural journalists of India.” I loved that dedication not only because it recognised the debt that Sacco owed to his guides in the field but it also acknowledges the largely unappreciated role that underpaid, often unprotected, journalists play in places away from the metros. Could Sacco tell me more about that dedication note? Sacco said that he has a journalist friend in Lucknow who introduced him to journalists in more remote and rural areas. They were his guides and they introduced him to a number of the central figures in the Muzaffarnagar riots. “Those introductions were key,” Sacco wrote. “These journalists were committed to their work and gave honest assessments of what happened, even when talking about their co-religionists. They were colleagues in every sense of the word.”

‘We’re all in the same boat’

I want to add a small note here. When the riots occurred back in 2013, I followed them in the news. Once again, I was struck by how rape and the destruction of homes, familiar to us from the reports in Gujarat, were the pattern being repeated in Uttar Pradesh. Then, I read the report from the refugee camps in Muzaffarnagar by the journalist Neha Dixit. Dixit’s account was a searing and unforgettable account. I returned to it when reading Sacco’s book. In fact, I want to tell you about the part in The Once and Future Riot where, as if I was still stumbling in the dark that Sacco had drawn on the page, I looked for Dixit’s original report from the weeks after the violence. In the dark of the night, two survivors step up to speak to Sacco. But their terrible secrets can only be guessed at. The artist stands self-conscious at the edge of the abyss the sisters inhabit – he leaves with feelings of self-recrimination already looming in the future.

How had Sacco come to learn about Muzaffarnagar and what interested him about the riot there? In his reply to this question, Sacco said that he had read a small article about it in a Western paper, and his friend in Lucknow had followed up by asking if he would be interested in examining the topic further. Sacco wrote, “My first inclination was to skip it, but then I thought it might be interesting to examine the kind of narratives communities create to gloss over a period of violence. The riots took place over a comparatively small area – three districts – which it seemed possible to criss-cross as needed. And the events of the riot were still fresh in people’s minds – still raw. Finally, though the riots had their own particular dynamic, they also seemed to fit a pattern of politicians manipulating violence to consolidate their voting blocs, so there was a bigger picture to consider as well.”

At the end, I had to confess to Sacco that I had been a coward when asked by publishers in India to make changes. I told him I had even posted about this on Instagram when the news first broke of Penguin India’s decision to not publish his book. Whenever advised by the legal department of any of my publishers in India to drop a name and replace it with the name of a party, I’d comply. Now I was preparing another manuscript, a big book on India. Did Sacco have any advice for people like me? Sacco wrote back: “I think it’s more likely that you and other Indian authors can give me advice about censorship and self-censorship! The so-called democracies seem to be drifting toward a more authoritarian model and, essentially, we are all in the same boat. Look how free speech is being suppressed in Western Europe and the United States. People in my society are often afraid to speak up, to publish, or to agitate for what they think is right. I think we are the ones that could use a bit of a backbone.” When I read Sacco’s reply I thought of it not so much as a reassurance but instead more as a challenge. There is so much servility in Indian media: Indian news today is “a factory of hate.” I hope the journalists and writers who have courage and honesty can accept the faith that Sacco shows in us and keep our spines straight.

This article first appeared on Amitava Kumar’s Substack.