Author: Joe Sacco
Year published: 2025
Category: Adult nonfiction (graphic novel)
Pages: 144
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2026 Google Reading map): India
Summary: Compared to other episodes of lethal Indian communal violence, the clashes in Uttar Pradesh in 2013, the Muzaffarnagar Riot, were a relatively small-scale affair―some scores of people were killed and several tens of thousands displaced. It had happened before and will probably happen again: Hindus and Muslims, armed with guns and swords, riled up by vitriolic rhetoric and a tangle of accusations, turn on one another. The truth fragments along religious lines, both in the lead-up to the rampage and in its bloody aftermath.
In The Once and Future Riot, Joe Sacco immerses himself in Uttar Pradesh, speaking to government officials, political leaders, village chiefs, and especially the victims, who were mostly landless peasants, in a quest to understand this riot as an archetype of political violence. In the process, he probes the role of savagery in a democracy; the power of crowds, rather than leaders, to influence the course of events; the collision of competing narratives; and the accounts that perpetrators construct to explain away their participation in bloodshed.
Review: When I see a graphic nonfiction by Joe Sacco, I figure it's obvious to get a copy. I already read Palestine, Footnotes on Gaza, Safe Area Gorazde, and Paying the Land (links to my reviews).
As with all of Sacco's graphic "novels," there is a lot going on in this one. He speaks with so many witnesses, victims, and perpetrators that it is easy to get lost in the details and lose track of who is who. But in reality, those details aren't what's important. I tend to go with the themes he presents concerning the Hindus (Jats) and Muslims: which group is in charge, which group did the killing, which group rioted, and which group was the victim? Um. Everyone? On both sides?
In this instance, it depends on who Sacco was talking to. Both sides claim victimhood and that they were attacked, with neighbors and family killed. The only thing both sides seem to agree on is that they can no longer live together. And Prime Minister Modi (a Hindu) agrees. This does not bode well for the future of Uttar Pradesh.
Like with Sacco's other books that I've read, I feel more knowledgeable after reading this one, and also more disgusted with humanity and the way religion is used against the people we live among.
Challenges for which this counts:
- 20 Books of Summer
- Cover Lovers--Someone with facial hair (a bunch of mustaches)
- Nonfiction
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