In my 2021 book, Flying Blind: India’s Quest for Global Leadership, I wrote about the tragedy of Africa.
Africa has forever been the world’s youngest, most exciting continent. Yet, since the end of colonialism in the 1960s, over 200 civil wars have ravaged nearly every country in the west, north and central regions. One former chief of UN peacekeeping once told me that as much as two-thirds of the UN Security Council’s agenda is about Africa’s wars. You might hear a lot about Ukraine. But did you know that a lesser-known war saw over 20,000 more deaths than in Ukraine last year? That was in Ethiopia.
Why are the Africans always fighting?
Contrary to popular perception, most wars don’t start anew. They are often old rivalries that break into violence every few years in a cycle that propels itself. A dominant tribe is thrown out of power in a coup. The newly victorious tribe uses its power to exact revenge on those previous rulers. That deposed tribe then huddles in the forests and launches a counter coup. Like matter and energy, tyranny can be transferred from one form to the other but never destroyed.
I’ve often cited India as a counter-example to Africa to prove the importance of credible democratic institutions. If disgruntled groups have a peaceful pathway to being heard within the system and courts protect their rights, they don’t have to build a militia in the forests to storm the presidential palace every few years.
But maybe India has its own version of Africa’s cycle of civil wars: a cycle of recurring communal riots. If India is a subcontinent, some would argue that riots function like localised civil wars. As in Africa’s civil wars, India’s communal riots are an expression of frustration with State institutions. People take to killing their enemies when they believe that the system is not listening to them, protecting their lives, or giving them a peaceful platform to sort out their disputes.
Riots are also often crimes without consequences. Countless thousands have perished in India’s riots over the years. Yet, almost no one has ever been punished for them. Leaders who presided over riots have often won elections — repeatedly.
More frighteningly, India’s riots are no longer as localised as they once were. Violence in one region increasingly echoes similar frustrations in another. That means that they are more liable to spread at some point.
A key problem is plummeting social trust. Most people only want to interact with people from their own clans and communities.
In 2021, Pew asked Indians about religion. Almost everyone across religious groups said that respecting other religions is very important to them. But the proof is in the pudding: Most Hindus, and even more Muslims, said that stopping inter-religious marriages is very important; 45% of the Hindus said that they would not want to live next door to a non-Hindu; 74% of the Muslims said that they want their own religious courts.
Curiously, when Pew asked Hindus and Muslims about religious values, practices and beliefs — respecting elders, conceiving of heaven and angels, believing in karma and fate — they largely agreed with each other.
But the problem for India is that its elections amplify and reward differences over commonalities, and State institutions increasingly struggle to enforce accountability for violence. Each group carries past baggage which desensitizes it to violence against rival groups. Today’s communal riot is seen as enforced atonement for the sins of yesterday’s riot. But as long as nobody is ever punished for instigating, overseeing or perpetrating a riot, can one reasonably expect them to end?