Social Marginalisation and Scapegoating: A Study of Mob Lynching in Pakistan and India

This research article aims at understanding the phenomena of mob lynching in India and Pakistan. Over the years, this problem is alarmingly on the rise in the two countries under study. Understanding this issue and finding out solutions is really the need of hour. This article explains this phenomenon with a theoretic-empirical interest. It studied cases of mob lynching. Data on India has been accessed from existing data sites; while, those on Pakistan, has been generated by this research. Rene` Girard’s sociological understanding of mob violence as a scapegoating mechanism informs this study. This research argues that mob lynching is a process of marginalisation of certain minorities. It has, as a result, been found out that pattern in both the countries are similar, only that the actors are different.