The demolition of the Babri Masjid and the post-Godhra communal violence set the grammar of the rule of the mobs. Create an issue, fan strong emotions of scorn and hatred, spread rumours to terrify the majority community, provide a flashpoint for action and then let the mobs take over.
The judiciary, which has so much experience and wisdom in dealing with individual crimes or small group conspiracies, has not shown the same capability in dealing with the lawlessness of large mobs. I tend to think that Indian people, with their millennia-long history of civilisation, have enough depth and wisdom in them to deal with such precarious turns of history. However, when an entire system created on the basis of principles embedded in the Constitution is reduced to ruins and mobs start roaming in the street as legislators of public and private morality, the situation can easily degenerate into a civil war. The West Bengal elections have shown us a fleeting trailer of how murderous it can be.
Civil wars, unlike revolutions, are no short affairs. They spread over years, even decades. They leave both sides charred and exhausted. No civil war ever ends in the triumph of any single side. All that they do is take a country back by a century or two on its road to becoming a civilised nation.
taken from A lesson from the Mahabharata https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/a-lesson-from-the-mahabharata-india-hijab-7775630/ G. N. Devy February 16, 2022
As the hijab issue roils the nation, it would do to remember how Krishna stood by Draupadi at a time when, as now, dharma was under siege and anarchy loomed.