A mob shouts slogans, caring little about an army squad marching by. Picture by Amit Datta

Nov. 21: Taslima Nasreen’s visa, Nandigram and Rizwanur Rahman might have only piggybacked on simmering discontent that exploded in Calcutta today, said sociologists.

They said this discontent among the minority community could get seemingly unconnected incidents to coalesce into street protests — urban violence triggered by painful pinpricks.

“Such violent protests have to be placed in the larger context of perceived as well as real discrimination that members of the minority community face,” said Radhika Chopra, a professor of sociology at Delhi University. “It (the discrimination) is experienced in many ways — lack of education, employment, nutrition, and housing, for example.”

In Calcutta, sociologist Prasanto Roy almost echoed Chopra. “The riot was not communal in nature as it was not between two communities. The anger was mainly against police, that is the administrative system, and could have been the result of grievances that had built up against the administration. The Taslima issue added fuel to the fire.”

Social psychologists also said individuals who have been emotionally aroused could display markedly different behaviour, particularly in the midst of like-minded individuals, than when alone.

“People tend to subjugate their own personal views to the views of the group,” said Sujata Sriram, an associate professor of human ecology at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.

Psychoanalysts attribute this to a person’s inability to regulate his or her own emotions, succumbing instead to group-driven decisions.

“This kind of behaviour is particularly visible during group or mob situations — when the voices around a person have greater influence than individual reasoning or thinking,” Sriram said.

“If it can happen in Bengal, it can happen anywhere,” said Delhi University professor Deepak Mehta, the co-author of Living with Violence, a 2007 book on the 1992-93 riots in Mumbai.

Social scientists said perceptions that drive such violence are deep-rooted and emerge from structural inequalities in society. “Nandigram, Rizwanur or Taslima.… it doesn’t matter what the specific issue is,” Mehta said.

Members of the minority community see themselves as politically targeted — because of events either in their own neighbourhood, or elsewhere in India, or the world. “There is fear about the state and its intentions,” Chopra said.