The Once and Future Riot. Joe Sacco. Henry Holt & Co. 2025. 144pp. $27.99
India was once a confident and reliable ally of the United States. Lately, due to the Trump administration’s belligerence and blundering, India has leaned deeper into Russia and China’s orbit. India is simply not enough on the radar of the average American, without some tie to India, to really know or care one way or another but, as Joe Sacco’s book makes clear, there are undeniable universal truths that India has to share with the rest of the world. Once again, Joe Sacco lays out the essential, and ever elusive, truth.
The elusive truth, lost in an instance. At its core, this is what Joe Sacco’s new book is about and what all of his comics journalism books are about. You don’t think you can relate to India, or to Palestinian genocide in Gaza at the hands of the Netanyahu administration? Well, think again. We live in a world where up is down and down is up and, all too often, we fight shadows and ignore the substance. In the case of this new work, Sacco focuses on the conflict between Hindus and Muslims in India. Some would say it is irreparable. Others would say it is a manufactured conflict that favors those in power who gin up the public, stoke the flames of hatred, exploit resentment and distrust.
Sacco interviews a Muslim cleric during his travels in India who plainly lays it out: The media is responsible for the hostility between Hindu and Muslim. “You start telling a lie again and again to make it a truth. TV channels have done it. TV channels are liars. They keep telling lies 24 hours a day.” Where there once was a friend, now there is a demon.
India, it must be stressed is a democracy, with a federalist framework similar to the United States. What happens in India is not from some distant and remote region. The world grows smaller every day, as it is. And India reflects this in a powerful way. Joe Sacco’s book lays out the dynamics that led to the bloody 2013 riots in the streets of Uttar Pradesh, the most populous and diverse state in India. What caused the violence is misinformation that fueled a mob mentality. It can happen again in India. It can, and is, happening in the United States. And it can happen anywhere.
“I was crying. Like anything . . .”
As easily as the United States can experience a collapse of order by the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021, so can a region of India once celebrated for harmony. The lethal power of demagoguery can not be overstated, despite what others who traffic in misinformation may say. We live in dangerous times with no sign of it letting up in our collective lifetimes. As long as there are people in power with the time and money but no wisdom or integrity, we remain in an endless cycle. Well, this should be painfully obvious. Sacco does not beat one over the head with the obvious but steadily covers the specifics of a specific moment in time. The reader gets to know particular people. The reader is guided along as these individuals confront their struggles, some needlessly to die. And it is through this specificity that Sacco reaches the universal.
When will this horror end?
It is within this calm and steady approach that Sacco builds up to the horror and tragedy of the riots in Uttar Pradesh. In one incident that Sacco documents, Muslims ambush droves of Hindus attempting to flee. The Muslim attack is relentless. Hindu farmers attempt to hide behind their trolley trucks only to have their vehicles ransacked. They are attacked with guns, rocks, swords and knives. One man witnesses his son bludgeoned and tossed off a truck. When he attempts to help him, he is overwhelmed by an oncoming mob. He calls out to the police who manage to get his son to a hospital, where he dies. It begs the question, When will this horror end? It is a question that perpetually begs for an answer.
