“Everything Is in Place to Start a Riot”: Joe Sacco
Talking about his latest comic journalism book, The Once and Future Riot, Joe Sacco reflects on the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 and threats to global democracy.
Book Cover. The Once and Future Riot by Joe Sacco. Publisher: Metropolitan Books
In 2014, journalist Joe Sacco, travelled to Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh, after interreligious riots between local Hindu Jats and Muslims devastated the northern Indian state in 2013.
Known for comics journalism on global conflict zones with books such as ‘Palestine’ (1993), ‘Footnotes in Gaza’ (2009), and ‘War's End: Profiles From Bosnia’ (2005), Sacco’s new book ‘The Once and Future Riot’, tells a story of the Muzaffarnagar riots of 2013 to reflect on the fate of democracy and the risk posed by communal tensions globally.
Meghnad Bose interviewed Sacco during his May book tour, with Jewish Currents and Hindus for Human Rights, to discuss why he tells stories of conflict and communal tension, his approach to telling stories, and his reflections on what we can learn from the Muzaffarnagar riots to deal with growing polarization.
The following is an excerpt from the conversation. It has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Meghnad Bose: How did you end up choosing the Muzaffarnagar riots in Uttar Pradesh, northern India, in 2013 for the book?
Joe Sacco: I'm always interested in events that are little flashes in the pan and then people forget. When you tell stories like these, you begin to see deeper meanings. I wanted to go and hear what people say about what happened, because the world and politics are based on narratives. You have to discover what actually happened and what people say happened. Journalism is not just a question of competing narratives. The journalist has to strive to reach what, imperfectly, is called the truth.
MB: In the book you presented a lot of competing, contradicting narratives. You present the perspectives but also challenge them along the way. Having reported on riots in India myself, sorting out who is telling the truth and who is lying is a challenge. How did you grapple with this challenge of how to present these competing narratives?
“I realized I have very Western perspectives. Why not just admit it? We all bring our cultural baggage with us.”
JS: A lot of my journalism is based on oral testimony. In some cases, there are imperfections in oral testimony. I did a story about Gaza where I was talking about a less well-known incident from 1956. People were recollecting 50-year-old memories. Many stories did not line up, but over a multitude of stories, I got a general arc of what happened. Journalists often are confronted with situations like this. Sometimes I like to throw this problem into the lap of the reader.
In the case of the Muzzafargar riots, many of those attacked, including Muslim laborers and people in tractor trolleys, their stories seemed to capture what happened. In other cases, especially in villages where violence was perpetrated, there are reasons to present a different narrative. It's not because they remember it differently, but more “I need to obscure what we did here. I need to shape the story to our best interest or to my best interest for legal reasons or some other reason.” I like to throw this, the seams of journalism, at the reader.
I went to journalism school. When I got out, I didn't understand how correspondents, especially those writing about a different cultural milieu, acted so authoritative. When I was in the field, I realized I often didn't know what was going on. I was looking at other journalists and realized they didn’t know either, but you never got it from reading their stories.
Sacco in Iraq in 2005 – CC BY-SA 3.0
I realized I have very Western perspectives. Why not just admit it? We all bring our cultural baggage with us. It's why I have a hard time believing in the objective style of journalism I was taught. When you are a Westerner, going into a context like India or Gaza, you are going to look at things through the prism of your upbringing. This is what I like about the comics form. I am showing myself — [and] by showing myself, I'm admitting to the reader that all they are seeing is being filtered through one person's eyes.
Excerpt from ‘The Once and Future Riot’ by Joe Sacco. Publisher: Metropolitan Books
“In Muzaffarnagar, people were getting up on podiums to get people’s emotions to simmer down, but in the end, the crowd did not want that.”
MB: You traveled to Muzaffarnagar in the mid 2010s and met the right-wing Hindu priest Yati Narsinghanand.Since then, he has become one of the Hindu far right’s most virulent figures in India who has openly called for genocidal violence against Indian Muslims and has multiple police cases against him. What do you remember about meeting Yati and others like him?
JS: I met him twice there. I was shocked that he would say something like “There've been 500 cases of gang rape in Uttar Pradesh in the last 10 years and not one time has a Hindu ever raped a Muslim girl in the entire country.” Even if you're a Hindu nationalist, how can you believe it?
MB: …a lot of people with those views are increasingly getting closer to power…
JS: Narsinghanand creates that space for people to go far to the right. He has stuck to his narrative. He argues that Hindus are victims. He claimed there would be a genocide of Hindus in Uttar Pradesh. It was astonishing.
MB: That also brings me to the title of your book. Why “The Once and Future Riot?”
JS: Because we need to address some basic things and think about what the word democracy means, beyond electoral politics. Of course, there is going to be tension and interests that go one way or another. At the end, the democratic spirit is about including voices.
This is not being addressed in India or in Western countries that call themselves democracies either. Everything is in place for a spark to start a riot, whether that riot is spontaneous or directed — even spontaneous riots will get directed. There are politicians who are going to see what use can be made out of this. In Muzaffarnagar, people were getting up on the podiums at some of the panchayats to get people’s emotions to simmer down, but in the end, the crowd did not want that. There have to be fundamental changes in the way we think of each other, and other communities. Because everyone takes on the mantle of victimhood so easily.
Excerpt from ‘The Once and Future Riot’ by Joe Sacco. Publisher: Metropolitan Books
“The political question was limited to: how are we going to consolidate our base further through this? It led to a huge political upheaval.”
Politicians use fear to consolidate their base. It's the easiest route. [Today] you are not going to consolidate a base by saying, we are going to increase the bus service from one place to another and we are going to clean the streets. People want that, but really what's going to agitate them is fear. Who is the other? Why are we the victims? This template has been going on. Not just in India. At a big mass rally before the wars started in the former Yugoslavia, the Serb nationalist leader Milosevic said they will never beat you again.
I think all the elements are in place, to perennially be in this space where there can be a riot and it often happens around elections. It is almost as if society is kept at this low boiling point, just beneath the surface. The same is happening in the United States. It's a very dangerous thing, because it could spiral out of control.
With the way in Uttar Pradesh that the Samajwadi party tried to play it, I think trying to appease the Muslim voter bloc backfired on them. When they offered compensation of 500,000 rupees, at first it was only given to Muslims who had lost their homes. It took the Indian Supreme Court to say every victim needs to be compensated. The political question was limited to: how are we going to consolidate our base further? It led to a huge political upheaval.
Talking about the West now, I think we're at a dangerous point with the way immigrants are talked about, when Trump calls people coming over from south of the border as the ‘worst kind of rapists and murderers.’ You are smearing entire populations. While a lot of people see through it, the problem is a lot of people don't.
Some people are looking at their lives and see that it's not going well. Politicians are finding convenient scapegoats. Is an American worker going to understand the economics at play and what's going on? It's just easier to have someone say, these Mexicans are taking your jobs, they're taking all the social security benefits, schools have to pay for all this, it's your tax money. Hatred is what we all understand quite easily.
MB: You visited Muzaffarnagar in 2014. This book got published in 2025. You have had some time for these thoughts to gestate. What were the other parallels that you reflected on over these years?
JS: I did the reporting in 2014, and I wrote it soon after that. It took me a while to get back to it because I didn't want to draw another violent book. But as I was drawing it, especially toward the end, Trump was elected and I saw how he was touching the edge of violence or allowing it [by] not condemning it. It is like the Modi model in Gujarat. You don't condemn, you sort of stand aside. When Charlottesville happened, Trump said that there were “very fine people, on both sides.” He did not try to stop it. He muddied the waters. Then the January 6 riots happened. The narrative from Trump's side is that these people were victims, and he, almost, absolved them of guilt? The charges were dropped. People had been killed. Trump is legitimizing a certain amount of violence. This is true around the world, you see this unaccountability.
“It’s just easier to have someone say, oh, actually, these Mexicans are taking your jobs, they’re taking all the social security benefits, ... it’s your tax money. Hatred is what we all understand quite easily.”
MB: At the conservative conference CPAC in 2025, I spoke to some of the Jan 6th rioters who'd been pardoned. I remember the feeling of impunity they had, and it reminded me of Hindutva vigilantes in Uttar Pradesh and other parts of India who have committed hate crimes against Muslims on camera without facing penalties. This parallel strikes one’s self when reporting on different geographies, from Palestine to Bosnia to India to the United States. What are your key takeaways from authoring this book?
JS: The Indian Constitution is interesting in that addressing certain inequalities is embedded into Indian democracy. It is sad to see that seeping away. The secular spirit of the original Constitution allows for different communities to have their place. It's a secular state, but it is a fine line. However, when Modi officiates, in a priestly manner, at the opening of a temple at the site of Babri Masjid, can you really call India a secular state?
As I was finishing the book, I realized I wanted to write it in a way that was particular to India, but could be seen as a commentary on democracies in general. I want the reader to come away with some questions and think about democracy and its relationship to electoral politics and why are we intertwining ourselves with violence?
MB: You don’t like to use the phrase, ‘graphic novel,’ to describe your work. It is non-fiction journalism. How do you describe it?
Excerpt from ‘The Once and Future Riot’ by Joe Sacco. Publisher: Metropolitan Books
JS: I don't like the phrase graphic novel [since it is non-fiction], but I use it since other people use it. Many cartoonists pushed back against the phrase, ‘graphic novel.’ It feels like a marketing term for adults. On the other hand, I don’t have a problem with the word ‘comics.’ People ask, ‘What's comical about that?’ However, comics is the term for published cartooning. I use the phrase comics journalism. Some people prefer calling it graphic journalism. I like using cartoons since it gives a reader a sense of place. I want the reader coming along for the ride. Drawings help by painting an atmosphere.
MB: Yes, the first few pages of traffic transported me to a bustling Indian street. Books like these delve into specific events but have a more universal message. What would you like someone who reads The Once and Future Riot to take away from it?
JS: I want people to think about their democracies. To think deeply about what their representatives represent and what their role is as a citizen. What is the responsibility of one citizen to another citizen? To look beyond their community differences, race, skin color, and other differences, and instead think of each other as citizens. I want the reader to interrogate these things.
Meghnad Bose is an award-winning investigative journalist based in the U.S. He is a professor of journalism at The University of Memphis, where he heads the MA program in Open-Source Investigative Reporting.