If we see the mob as amorphous and their hate as shifting, given to complex personal motivations and vulnerabilities, we are much closer to understanding it-and to opening up conversations that can lead to change. But the act of turning around and looking at individuals from that crowd changes everything. The mob has always been a faceless, unidimensional machine. ‘The most terrifying truth about a mob is not that we can’t understand how they operate, but that we can.’ What makes a man stand by and watch violence being done to another? What does a woman do after her husband has killed a pregnant stranger? What latent tensions and complexes did the instigators of violence draw upon to unleash the carnage of 28 February 2002? Investigations into mass violence in India, and Gujarat 2002 in particular, have focused on the consequences, the victims, the political apparatus.
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