The 84% rise in communal riots in 2024 in India, compared to 2023, is a very significant finding (“India saw 84% rise in communal riots in 2024: Report”). I may have spotted an important methodological issue, though. The report by the Centre for Study of Society and Secularism, which (quite rightly) uses newspapers as the source of data, does not include “communal riots that are either not reported or are reported in other editions of these newspapers”.

It is, indeed, true that newspapers do not always report riots that did not lead to fatalities. For a scholar, this is “missing data” – a common nuisance that can adversely affect their findings. Given that quite a few riots likely went unreported in both 2023 and 2024, or either year, a comparison of riot occurrences is unlikely to be fruitful or accurate. For example, if 2023 had as many riots (many unreported) as in 2024, it tells us a very different story – that nothing changed between the two years.

A better method would involve counting fatalities rather than the number of riots. Newspapers will always report riots with fatalities, even if the death toll is only one. This better-quality data would reduce the bias arising from missing data on riots. Further, fatalities have greater political and social ramifications than property damage. Unfortunately, the report provides us the number of fatalities for only 2024, not 2023.

This methodological problem, of course, does not take away from the implications of the report. Small-scale rioting has always been a successful way of keeping the fires of hostility burning – until the time is perfect for pogrom-like anti-minority violence to be organised, when required. It is usually required when a political party in power, whose victory does not depend on minority votes, finds its power waning. Extreme violence is a tempting strategy to consolidate the majority vote. – Raheel Dhattiwala

Kumbh photos

Shame on Scroll for running a business on public pain (“Despair and horror: 10 photos that tell the story of the stampede at the Maha Kumbh Mela”). You should share good things instead of photographs of scared and crying pictures people. – Jiggi

Send Christian clergy to convert Muslims

Christians can live peacefully in India if they stop proselytising (“In Chhattisgarh, a Christian man’s body seeks a grave as fraternity is given a burial”). But they are not ready to that. What is an army of thousands of pastors, nuns and other clergy doing in Hindu-majority states? Like any other country or society, Indians also have the right to push back against forces that disparage local religion and culture and promote an alien religion.

Withdraw the army of pastors and nuns and deploy them in Kashmir, Kerala’s Malappuram, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh to proselytise and convert Muslims. – Muraleedharan Nair

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As usual, this report is not only one-sided but deliberately provocative “(Why a Christian pastor was denied a burial in his own village by India’s Supreme Court”). Let me inform your readers that it is a common and well-established practice that Christians bury their dead in the cemetery of their church and that they are barred from the graveyards of others. This fact should have been highlighted. Burial and last rites should not have twisted.

But it seems the family of the dead thought they can bully the others and that the judiciary and media and news portals like Scroll will always come to their rescue and force others to give in to their demands. Last but not the least, who is paying for these adventures? This should have been investigated by the reporter.

Shame on Scroll for unnecessarily creating controversy. – Ajay Kumar Jha

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Orthodoxy is always blind. Its animosity pounces not only on the living but also the dead. Religious fanatics now have their heyday in our country. Secularism and democracy have been withering over the past few years. – Saikat Rudra

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The “divide and rule policy” of the Bharatiya Janata Party continues. The regime is anti-Christian yet openly seeking “alms: from Christian countries and are even exporting their “Hindu” population to these very countries. – Noel Freeman