Flash mobbing

The mobs who rampaged around Gujarat, sometime thousands strong, were reputedly paid in alcohol and a few hundreds rupees a day. Their leaders held computer printouts of official records, pointing out Muslim homes and businesses, and they were linked by mobile phones, coordinated with extraordinary precision. Despite repeated arguments from human rights organisations that these mobs couldn’t have sprung up spontaneously the day after Godhra, but were in fact acting out a long-planned strategy, many Indians, including most of the educated and decent people I’ve known all my life, support the Indian politicians who say the Gujarat massacres were an expected reaction to the provocation of the Godhra killings.