Shifting Shapes Of Mob Violence
Govindan Nair
THE ANATOMY OF HATE by Revati Laaul Context, Chennai, 2018, 232 pp., 599
June 2019, volume 43, No 6

Gripping, agonizing, stomach churning.  The Anatomy of Hate is all of these, while also holding up a subtle, insightful and illuminating mirror to modern-day Indian society.

Revati Laul devoted more than ten years speaking to scores of persons about the sectarian violence that engulfed Gujarat in 2002; prising out excruciating recollections, trying to make sense of the motivations of the participants and delving into what drives mob behaviour.  The result is this disturbing book that describes the trajectories of the lives of three young men who were intimately involved in the horrific events of 2002. A book, which—counter-intuitively—is not devoid of hope. Laul attempts to get into the heads of the perpetrators of the violence in order to comprehend the basis of their hate.  In vivid detail the book goes on to describe the guilt and fear they carried and what happens thereafter.

Suresh was born into a family whose avocation was crime.  Polio having given him an ungainly limp, he was the butt of taunts, especially from his father. Lacking self-worth and consumed by anger, the unlettered Suresh slipped rapidly into a violent underworld driven by bootlegging, theft and extortion.  Not averse to demonstrating his masculinity through abduction and sexual assault, he built up a fearsome reputation in Chharanagar, the Ahmedabad slum bordering Naroda Patiya, a Muslim-dominated neighbourhood that suffered some of the worst atrocities of 2002.  In Laul’s words: ‘It was in this part of Ahmedabad city, which law and justice systems had long ignored, that the most testosterone-driven, sabre-rattling arm of the Hindu right—the Bajrang Dal—decided to proselytise’, recruiting Suresh and other malcontents like him.  On 28 February 2002, Suresh not only indulged in targetted arson, killing and burning of his Muslim neighbours, but also in rape and in the egregious disembowelling of a pregnant woman.

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