The Once and Future Riot

This graphic novel investigates the 2013 Muzaffarnagar Riot that took place in India. Graphic journalist Joe Sacco examines the sectarian violence, crowd dynamics and competing narratives concerning the riot. The book was published in October 2025.

The publisher's 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.

Hailed as “the heir to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman” (Economist), Sacco has chronicled the urgent histories that define the world around us, from the Great War to Gaza. Here, he turns his masterful visual reportage to a story that is specific to India but with implications and resonance for all precarious multiethnic, multiracial societies everywhere.

 After finishing the book I thought that one side had to be primarily at fault for the riot. I had some difficulty determinating which party held that fault so I re-read the book. I kept a cheat sheet detailing who did what in each village. It was an exercise in futility.

The root cause of all of the distrust between the Hindus and the Muslims was the Partition of 1947. The Partition forced Muslims to leave India and move to a new country, Pakistan, where they would be the majority population. Hindus no longer wanted Muslim neighbors even though Muslims were working on their farms. The economics of the Partition resulted in Hindu farm owners paying double the wages to anyone willing to work their farms. Muslims were too far away to labor for them. Before Partition Hindus and Muslims lived peacably side by side. Each faction respected the other. What a mistake it was.

The trigger of most of the clashes was mistreatment of women. The men would then kill the perpetrators but they would eventually be killed themselves in retaliation. The political and religious leaders were never able to prevent the violence and in many cases they did not want to stem the violence. Leaders on both sides fueled anger by spreading misinformation. Unfortunately, Muslims were forced to live in camps after Jat Hindus burned down their villages. The riot itself lasted a few days but violence seems to be a norm in Indian politics, hence the "future" riot. 

I enjoyed reading the book and learned alot about Indian politics. I felt the author's frustration as he traveled throughout the Uttar Pradesh region trying to obtain the truth. Very few people told him what really happened in their villages, preferring to tell him a narrative set by their personal politics. This was a difficult assignment for the author but he did well in telling the reader how he searched for answers on a daily basis.

5 out of 5 stars.