No, you started it

Thoughts on The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco

In the red corner, as far as I can tell, there’s a specific part of the Hindu population, known as Jats.

In the blue, there is the local Muslim population.

There is also the government, which I think is biased towards Hindus, but there also seems to be something about needing the Muslim vote in the area to secure power, so the government appears to sometimes act against the Hindu Jats.

There are also the police, but they—like the government—appear to be corrupt.

Maybe.

We’re in a part of India called Uttar Pradesh.

Specifically, a place called Muzaffarnagar.

And this all happened, by the way. It’s still happening.

But if I had to sit an exam on how the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots began after reading The Once and Future Riot, or explain their impact, I would fail.

Fail a) because I’m stupid and was always shit at writing essays. (My friend Tom once misspelled Mr. Pumblechook throughout an essay about Mr. Pumblechook in Great Expectations and still got a higher mark than I did.)

But also b) because I think Joe Sacco, in his typical way, intends you to come away from this graphic novel unsure and unresolved, much like the conclusion of the original riot from which the book takes its title.

John Pilger with pictures

We live in a big and busy world.

It’s easy to forget that.

This is why I like Sacco’s graphic novels. He reports on stories that aren’t always in the mainstream, or when they are, he investigates from a more nuanced angle.

Then he couples his investigative journalism with his trademark visual style, and something clever happens—it all comes together to create a sense of what’s going on, without being too prescriptive or black and white.

It’s a bit like reading John Pilger if Pilger published his work in the Beano.

Here, the approach works particularly well because there seems to be a certain amount of ambiguity about who is to blame for the animosity between Hindus and Muslims in Uttar Pradesh.

Chances are, it was probably the British that fucked it all up after the war, when we just started drawing arbitrary lines across huge land masses with what seems like an ip-dip-dog-shit approach (but more sinisterly, probably involved oil and/or minerals).

But our post-war failings aside, more recent populism, political power-grabbing, and a general rise in inequality (which I’m guessing has something to do with globalisation) have all led to things kicking off again. Where Hindus and Muslims once lived side by side happily, there is now increasing secularism.

Should the Hindus be blamed?

Should the Muslims?

Should the police?

The government?

That’s the question Sacco is trying to figure out—to some extent—in The Once and Future Riot.

There is, of course, no clear answer.

Where religious lines are concerned, there is questionable behaviour on both sides.

Where the police and politicians are concerned… hmmm.

Like with most police and almost every politician, they are interested in power—and we all know what power has a habit of doing.

Am I any clearer on how or why the Muzaffarnagar riots started after reading this?

Maybe not.

Am I glad to be aware of them and glad that my awareness was raised by another fascinating and brilliantly drawn graphic novel by Joe Sacco?

Yes.

And that’s at least something.

My recommendation: If you’ve never read a graphic novel by Joe Sacco, this is as good a place as any to start. I’d also check out his other work, particularly Paying the Land and Palestine. You’ll come away a little stressed and possibly frightened by how big and bad the world around us really is. But I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing.