Riot

by Shashi Tharoor

  Do you know what my colleague Sadhvi Rithambhara says? The Sadhvi is a famous preacher — a woman, for we are a progressive, modern faith, Mr. Diggs: have you ever heard of a Muslim woman preacher? Anyway, this is what she says: Muslims are like a lemon squirted into the cream of India. They turn it sour. We have to remove the lemon, cut it up into little pieces, squeeze out the pips and throw them away. That is what we have to do, Mr. Diggs. That is what the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, the Bajrang Dal, the Shiv Sena, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and all the associated organizations of our political family, the Sangh Parivar, will do one day. And the whole world should be grateful, because these Muslims are evil people, I tell you. Why is it that no Muslim country anywhere in the world is a democracy? Look around you, anywhere on the map, they are all dictatorships, monarchies, tyrannies, military regimes. Take my word for it, it’s the only way they know. Muslims are fanatics and terrorists; they only understand the language of force. Where are Muslims in power where they are not oppressing other people? And wherever these Muslims are, they fight with others. Violence against non-Muslims is in their blood, Mr. Diggs! Look at what Muslims are doing in the Middle East, Indonesia, the Philippines. Only in Yugoslavia do Muslims live in peace with non-Muslims. But that is because the Muslims there are the only Muslims in the world who are not fanatic about their faith. Unlike the ones we have here.

  But I digress. You asked me about the background to the riot. Our Ram Sila Poojan procession. As I was saying, these Muslims are evil people, Mr. Diggs. They could not abide the thought of us Hindus reasserting our pride. We were peacefully minding our own business — what did it have to do with them? We did not have any great love for these Muslims, it is true, but we would not have attacked them. Why spoil a sacred event with an unnecessary fight? No, it was they who started it. As they always do.

  I will tell you what happened. How it happened. It was the eve of the day of the great procession — Friday the twenty-ninth. Yes, yes, Friday is their holy day, but their big prayers were long over and we had not disturbed them. Our volunteers, good Hindu boys, stalwarts of the Bajrang Dal and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, were doing their work in the evening, preparing for the great day the next day, Saturday the thirtieth. They were putting up posters, tying flags to lampposts, stringing the bunting and the pennants across the road. My own son Raghav was amongst them.

  The work took time, it became dark, but everyone was in good spirits. Some were singing. It was late, but though they were tired, they were looking forward to the next day. Suddenly, they heard the noise of a motorcycle engine. Out of the darkness it came, two men on a motorcycle, with no light on.

  Muslims.

  Muslims! Their evil faces were masked with burqas, the black robes their women wear so that no one can see them. The motorcycle slowed down. Some of our boys were standing and working quite far from the road. But two boys, Amit Kumar from Bahraich, and Arup, Makhan Singh’s son, good boys from decent families, were painting slogans on a wall near the pavement. The motorcycle neared them. Still the rest of the group didn’t realize anything was wrong. Then those burqa-clad cowards raised their arms. Dull steel flashed in the moonlight.

  Daggers! Mr. Diggs, they had daggers!

  Savagely they slashed at the Hindu boys. The others stared mesmerized for a moment, helpless as the attackers’ arms went up and down, again and again, striking our two boys in the back, arms, legs, face. They screamed as they went down, and my son Raghav and his friends rushed towards them. But it was, Raghav tells me, as in a dream, when your legs don’t carry you forward as fast as you want to go. The motorcycle engine revved and it was gone, one last flailing of an arm nearly slashing my son’s face as he ran towards Amit and Arup.

  The poor boys were in a very bad way They were bleeding from cuts everywhere. Their arms and legs dangled helplessly, Raghav said, like those of a rag doll. They picked them up, rushed them to the Zalilgarh government hospital. They called me. I went straight to the hospital, then to the police. It was terrible. The boys needed many emergency operations. All through the night we waited, rage and prayer mingling in our hearts. Ram be praised, they survived. But Amit would never walk again without a limp. And Arup Singh, a handsome boy who was to get married the next month, was left with a hideously scarred face that he would have to live with for the rest of his days.

  There was blackness in our hearts that night, Mr. Diggs. These Muslims could not be allowed to get away with this. We knew what they wanted — to stop our procession the next day. To thwart our Ram Sila Poojan program. To prevent, in the end, the rebuilding of the Ram Janmabhoomi temple itself. This was a victory we were determined they would never be allowed to have.

  At dawn that morning, the thirtieth of last month, I was asked to go to the police station. Me? The police station? What wrong had I done? But no, they told me, it was for an emergency meeting of Hindu community leaders. Others would be there — the pramukhs and leaders of the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal. All the major Hindu groups. So I agreed, though I had no great faith in this young district magistrate or his ally, the superintendent of police. These people, they come to our districts with fancy so-called secular ideas they have learned in English-language colleges, and they try to tell us what to do. They, who do not understand their own culture, their own religion, their own heritage. Such people have no right to call themselves Indians. But they rule over us, you see.

  When we assembled at the police station, the DM and the SP were already there. Lakshman, the DM is called. From the South. A good- looking man, if with somewhat feminine features, and rather too dark to have found himself a good bride here. The SP is a turbaned Sikh, Gurinder Singh. Neither Hindu nor Muslim, though his people have fought the Muslims for centuries. But with people like Lakshman and Gurinder it didn’t matter what their religion was. They had both been to the same college, I believe, some fancy-shmancy Christian missionary place in Delhi where they only talk English and eat with forks and knives. So they thought alike. That was our problem.

  Lakshman didn’t waste any time getting to the point. “I know you are all concerned about the incident last night,” he said.

  “Concerned?” the Bajrang Dal man, Bhushan Sharma, interrupted him, almost screaming. “We’re bloody enraged! Those boys were brutally murdered in cold blood!”

  “They’ll be all right,” Lakshman said calmly. “I’ve spoken to the doctors. There’s been no murder in Zalilgarh. Yet.”

  “No thanks to the Muslims,” Sharma was still shouting. “Murder is exactly what they intended. What kind of law and order are you maintaining in this city?”

  “We have made some arrests overnight,” Gurinder said, smiling. He smiled a lot, especially when he was talking about deadly serious matters. “We will find the perpetrators.” He always used words like that. “The perpetrators are absconding.” Even when he was supposed to be speaking Hindi. “Perpetrators abscond kiye hain.” Still, Gurinder had a reputation for being an efficient man. And an honest one, which is rare enough in his profession.

  “But I want to ensure that the situation doesn’t get out of hand,” Lakshman added. “The police will bring these assailants to justice. But I must appeal to you all to stay calm. And above all, to refrain from any action that could inflame the situation.”

  “Refrain? Us refrain?” Sharma was belligerent. “Are we to sit back and take anything the Muslims fling at us? Especially today, when we have so much at stake?”

  “Especially today,” Lakshman replied. “In fact, after what has happened last night I wonder about the advisability of proceeding with your march today. I suggest you consider postponing—”

  But he could not get the rest of his sentence out before he was drowned in a hubbub of protest from all of us. After everyone had shouted their objections, I stood up, leaned on the table, and looked him squarely in the eyes. “That is exactly what the Muslims want us to do,” I said quietly. “They hoped to intimidate us into giving up our plans. And you want us to play
into their hands? Never!”

  Lakshman tried everything. Oh, what a variety of approaches he tried. Calm reasonableness. Firm advice. Earnest appeal. Passionate entreaty. Tensions were high, he said. Our Ram Sila Poojan program had awakened the fears of the minority community. They were afraid, anxious, easy prey for extremists and hotheads. We had already seen what could happen. If we marched, there was no telling what else could occur. A small spark could ignite a conflagration. Did we want that?

  “They attack us, and you tell us they are afraid?” Sharma was scathing. “We want to march peacefully, and you tell us we are inflaming tensions? This is a strange way of seeing things, District Magistrate-sahib.”

  After several attempts, he realized we were implacable. The Ram Sila Poojan march through Zalilgarh would go ahead as planned. We were determined not to be diverted from our long-planned course.

  He changed tack. “Change your route, then,” he suggested, pulling a map out of a folder that Gurinder passed him. “The route you are planning to take for your march is dangerous. It goes right through Muslim mohallas, and in two places passes right in front of Muslim mosques. Some Muslims will see this as provocation, and I must say I can’t disagree with them. You will simply incite some of the hotheads into doing something like last night.”

  “If they do, DM—sahib,” I replied, “they will be breaking the law. And it is your job to deal with them. Yours and the SP’s.” Gurinder did not react, other than to smile again. “We are exercising our democratic rights to take out this procession. You are afraid that some criminal elements will break the law if we do. Well, then, catch them. Prosecute them. Punish them. But don’t punish us.”

  “There are more than thirty thousand young men, volunteers from all over the district, gathered in Zalilgarh for this march,” Sharma added. “Are you going to try and stop them, Mr. Lakshman?”

  Lakshman and Gurinder exchanged glances, as if to say that this was exactly what they had considered doing. It would have led to violence if they had tried — violence between the volunteers and the police. They had clearly thought better of it.

  “No, I am not going to try and stop you,” Lakshman replied at last. He did not say “stop them,” but “stop you.” He was looking at me rather than at Bhushan Sharma. “But I am relying on your good sense to ensure that your volunteers behave. And that nothing is done, especially in the Muslim neighborhoods, that threatens the peace here in Zalilgarh.”

  “Of course,” said someone, trying to be conciliatory, and before we knew it, Lakshman and Gurinder were laying down conditions. We could march, but we must not beat drums or cymbals near the mosques. We could shout slogans, but they had to be moderately phrased, and not inflammatory. We could carry placards, but no weapons. Conditions he was entitled to impose on us by virtue of the power vested in him as district magistrate. We had to agree, or his smiling Sikh accomplice could withdraw the police permission we had to march. Surely they wouldn’t dare? We could have called their bluff, but there was nothing to be gained by confronting them. We agreed.

  “I want it in writing,” Lakshman said, biting a lower lip.

  These overeducated college types. They want things in writing, as if the magic of a few words-turds on a page would cast some sort of spell on us peasants. We looked at each other; Sharma shrugged. Gurinder wrote down his rules on a sheet of police stationery, and we all signed.

  We knew it would make no difference. Whatever was going to happen, was going to happen.

  And we were prepared.

  from Priscilla Hart’s scrapbook

  July 16, 1989

  Learned something interesting about the Hindu god Ram, the one all the fuss is about these days. Seems that when he brought his wife Sita back from Lanka and became king, the gossips in the kingdom were whispering that after so many months in Ravana’s captivity, she couldn’t possibly be chaste anymore. So to stop the tongues wagging, he subjected her to an agni-pariksha, a public ordeal by fire, to prove her innocence. She walked through the flames unscathed. A certified pure woman.

  That stopped the gossips for a while, but before long the old rumors surfaced again. It was beginning to affect Ram’s credibility as king. So he spoke to her about it. What could Sita do? She willed the earth to open up, literally, and swallow her. That was the end of the gossip. Ram lost the woman he had warred to win back, but he ruled on as a wise and beloved king.

  What the hell does this say about India? Appearances are more important than truths. Gossip is more potent than facts. Loyalty is all one way, from the woman to the man. And when society stacks up all the odds against a woman, she’d better not count on the man’s support. She has no way out other than to end her own life.

  And I’m in love with an Indian. I must be crazy.

  Professor Mohammed Sarwar to V. Lakshman

  August 26, 1989

  Thanks for receiving me. It’s flattering to think I made enough of an impact in college that you still remember me.

  Yes, I’m at the Univ now, good old Delhi University, teaching in the History Department. Actually, I’ll be here for a few weeks. Trying to do some research in my period that seems oddly topical right now. I’m working on the life of a man called Syed Salar Masaud Ghazi, popularly known as Ghazi Miyan, a hugely revered Muslim warrior-saint in these parts. You haven’t heard of him? So you see why my research is necessary.

  The fact is that we have, especially in North India, an extraordinary tradition of heroes, whether warriors or saints or, in this instance, both, who are worshipped by both communities, Hindu and Muslim. You hear a lot about the “composite culture” of North India, but not enough about what I tend to call its composite religiosity. A number of Muslim religious figures in India are worshipped by Hindus — think of Nizamuddin Auliya, Moinuddin Chishti, Shah Madar, Shaikh Nasiruddin who was known as Chiragh-i-Delhi, or Khwaja Khizr, the patron saint of boatmen, after whom even the British saw fit to name their Kidderpore Docks in Calcutta. Ghazi Miyan is in this league.

  But it’s not enough to hail composite religiosity, to applaud complacently the syncretism of Hindu-Muslim relations in India. Of course we have to keep reminding people that tolerance is also a tradition in India, that communal crossovers are as common as communal clashes. But we mustn’t abdicate the field of religious conflict to the chauvinists on both sides. What we need, as my friend and fellow professor Shahid Amin, whom you knew at college, likes to say, are “nonsectarian histories of sectarian strife.”

  Ghazi Miyan, according to popular belief, was a great Muslim warrior who was killed on the field of battle in A.D. 1034 fighting a bunch of Hindu rajas not that far from here, a bit to the north, at Bahraich. Soon after his death he was canonized in popular memory; people began gathering regularly at his tomb; ballads of his exploits were composed in both the Awadhi and Bhojpuri languages, and he is mentioned in a number of Persian and Urdu histories, though if I were writing this Id put “histories” in inverted commas — some of them are little better than unsubstantiated hagiographies. But what’s interesting is that the Ghazi Miyan of the historical texts was no apostle of Hindu-Muslim unity. He was a warrior for Islam. In one seventeenth-century text he’s even described as the nephew of Mahmud of Ghazni, that notorious invader who destroyed the fabled Somnath temple in the eleventh century. And as a soldier, the texts say, he went about his business slaying infidels and smashing idols with the worst of them. When he died he was a martyr on a jihad, and his soul may be assumed to have gone straight to an Islamic heaven with no vacancies for Hindus.

  So why is this same Ghazi Miyan worshipped by the very Hindus he apparently attacked? Why do Hindu women pray at his tomb for a male child of his noble qualities? Why are songs and ballads to him sung by Hindus? And they were — in fact many of these songs were collected by British colonial ethnographers in the late nineteenth century across a wide swath of North India from Delhi to Varanasi. Now, what’s interesting about them is that they tell a different story, of a warrior born wi
th the curse that he would die unwed, who was killed on the day of his wedding when he went forth to protect his herds and his herdsmen from the marauding Hindu Raja Sohal Deo.

  And what did his herds consist of? Of cows! Now, doesn’t that ring any bells for you? Does the youthful warrior defending his cows not remind you of Lord Krishna of Hindu legend, seducer of milkmaids and protector of cows? In fact, in one of the popular ballads, it is Krishna’s foster mother, Jashodha, who makes a dramatic entry into the wedding celebrations of Ghazi Miyan, drenched in the blood of cowherds slaughtered by Raja Sohal Deo, and pleads with him to rise to the defense of the cows. Imagine the scene as this young Muslim bridegroom rises, casts aside his wedding finery, begs forgiveness from his mother, straps on his sword, and walks out to do battle against the killer of kine. It’s stirring stuff, I tell you, and there’s more in the songs and ballads I’ve collected: tales reinventing episodes from the Ramayana, tales featuring Krishna himself, all wrapped up in the life of Ghazi Miyan, and sometimes in the miraculous powers of his tomb.

  What explains these contradictory legends, of the martyred jihadi revered by Muslim fundamentalists and the noble cow-protector worshipped by ordinary Hindus? Extremists of both stripes have sought to discredit the secular appeal of Ghazi Miyan. The Hindu fundamentalists have attacked the ballads as fraudulent tales made up by scheming Muslim tricksters to hoodwink gullible Hindus. They’ve also given much circulation to the jihadi versions of Ghazi Miyan’s story. And as to the episode of the cows, they argue that the cows had actually been earmarked for slaughter at Ghazi Miyan’s wedding feast, and that the reason Raja Sohal Deo attacked the Ghazi’s cowherds was in order to liberate the cows from certain death at the hands of the Muslims. Hindus, they say, have been duped for centuries into worshipping an oppressor, and a foreign invader at that. The Hindutva types lament that the offerings made by Hindus at the Ghazi’s tomb go to support Islamic schools, hospitals, and mosques — the very fact that the secularists hail as evidence of composite religiosity.