#DelhiRiots | I have been in classes and seminars all day| The argument below appears to have led to some strong approvals and vigorous criticisms| I write a detailed response below, which i could not earlier| The term "semi-pogrom" is the crux of the matter| (1/n)
#DelhiRiots| The term "pogrom" came in the social sciences from the anti-semitic mob violence against the Jews in Tsarist Russia| The Odessa pogrom is the most extensively studied pogrom of that period| Mobs aided, or overlooked, by the local police killed with abandon| (2/n)
#DelhiRiots| This origin has led to a two-fold concept| A pogrom is not only (i) an act of mob attack unleashed on a minority, aided or overlooked by the state police, but also (ii) one that is ideologically charged| (ii) in Russia, later in East Europe, meant anti-semitism|(3/n)
#DelhiRiots| It follows that if both conditions are not satisfied, a pogrom, namely an act of mob violence against a minority, is only a semi-pogrom| That is simply the conceptual precision required in the social sciences; it is not act belittling the intensity of violence| (4/n)
#DelhiRiots| If a social scientist like me is true to his craft, he can't work like a hard scientist, believing only in 1 or 0| There are greys in social & political life; values between 0 and 1 are real for us| "Semi-democracy", "semi-liberal" are widely prevalent concepts|(5/n)
#DelhiRiots|That is why (a) Delhi 1984 was a semi-pogrom, & (b) Gujarat 2002 a pure pogrom|Though ghastly,(a) was strategic,for Congress had no anti-Sikh ideology|Sikhs have returned to Congress;Manmohan Singh was Congress Prime Minister,and Punjab's Congress boss is a Sikh|(6/n)
#DeliRiots|Can you imagine a BJP Muslim Prime Minister, or a BJP Muslim state Chief Minister| The probability is close to zero, for BJP is ideologically anti-Muslim| That should show why the two pogroms had a different character, even though both were equally savage| (7/n)
#DelhiRiots| None of this means that Congress should not be criticized and only BJP should be| No Congress is also culpable for Delhi 1984 and must be condemned for letting its goons loose on Delhi's Sikh minority| (8/n)
#DelhiRiots| Moreover, in the eyes of the law, the two pogroms - strategic and ideological - may be indistinguishable| Ideologically charged or not, mobs simply can't be allowed, or led, to kill. Period| A social science distinction is not necessarily a legal distinction| (9/n)
#DelhiRiots| To call such distinctions "offensive" or "obscene" is to show ideological virulence, not intellectual sophistication| And to say that such conceptual differentiation is due to the "scraps" that might have been thrown or not is to debase the act of analysis|(n/n)
