Life Among the Scorpions

by Jaya Jaitly

  Jaya

  George Sahib’s relationship with Chandra Shekhar was full of camaraderie mixed with frustration:

  CShekhar keeps complaining that I’m rushing him into prison. He also keeps proclaiming that he is coming under my spell in regard to political style and tactical lines. But this is only superficial. Unless he falls in line with me on socio-economic policies and programmes, there is precious little to be gained by either of us.

  We have many battles to fight and overcome, and, believe me, we shall overcome. Of course, I keep waiting for you to get into the mainstream of that struggle, and as you perhaps know, I am a man of immense patience and great faith.

  George Sahib regularly pushed me towards committing to more political work instead of spending so much time working for a government organization, but I loved travelling to Gujarat, sometimes taking my children along so they could see rural life in western India and what their mother was doing when she wasn’t at home. They learned to draw water from wells and sleep on charpoys under the stars in the Banni desert; and my daughter learned to embroider flowers from little girls whom she taught drawing flowers with crayons on paper.

  ~

  Decades later, in 2014, George Sahib’s brothers were fighting Leila Fernandes in court to be able to care for him. I had given an affidavit saying Leila had not been living with him for twenty-four years. In court, Leila’s lawyer Meenakshi Lekhi (now MP), on behalf of her client, made allegations against me of neglecting my children during those years, implying the reason to be George Sahib. She was quite aggressive in the court proceedings on behalf of her client, and I was surprised that a lawyer would go to such lengths to offend the other side. Maybe, I was naive. I was surprised when her name was announced as the BJP candidate from New Delhi in the general elections. During these court proceedings I told her that although I was unhappy with her, I would have to cast my vote for her in the forthcoming election. Her father-in-law, P.N. Lekhi, had been a very good friend of George Sahib’s who often phoned me if he needed small favours, including requesting me to ask George Sahib if he could use his garden for his son’s wedding. I decided to vote for her anyway as I was committed to supporting the NDA. A lesson I learned over the years was to overcome a personal feeling in favour of a political necessity.

  Without a doubt, I was getting politicized under George Sahib’s influence. It had nothing romantic about it. The atmosphere in the country was already worse. Means to quell voices of dissent—like ours who had protested Operation Blue Star at civil society gatherings—in the form of tapping our phones, were being exercised. My association with George Fernandes could also have been, quite clearly, an additional reason for the interference since he was already viewed as a trouble maker by Indira Gandhi. Driving alone on heavily barricaded roads at night was scary. This angry note of mine shows how:

  …I mentioned someone has been blatantly listening in on phone calls. Earlier in the evening the person cut into another conversation and was quite rude to me. He said he was from the exchange. After you rang off I kept holding on to the phone as I could almost hear him breathing—so he came on the line again saying hello, hello but I didn’t say a word so he disconnected…. Please don’t give exact news about your movements and travel plans on the phone. In a roundabout manner would be better. I’ll understand eg if you are coming from Bombay reaching here at 7.45, say you’ll bring Freddy’s clothes over to the house at 7.45 or something like that. I don’t want them to know where you are and what you are doing all the time. They are only welcome to hear our opinions about them and their leader and not what we are doing, even if it is only eating papayas.

  I wrote a letter to all the papers with a copy to Pratipaksh [the Hindi journal edited by Vinod Prasad Singh on behalf of George Sahib] about the crude invasion of privacy, describing the entire day’s telephone eavesdroppers, the ‘torn’ register, etc. Very annoying and I’m getting sick of accepting all this quietly just because we take it for granted they are rotten.

  Hope Biju relished the crab curry.

  Jaya

  My life was still fairly routine, but for George Sahib who depended more on me as a sounding board or a ‘base camp’ to share a variety of thoughts.

  The great sadness in the relationship between George Sahib, as a father, and his son Sushanto developed much later when his son grew older and perhaps shared his mother’s antagonisms. However, during those days when he went to see him at Rishi Valley School, a few words reveal the love and pride George Sahib felt for Sushanto, and how I was a family friend who was around to help out whenever he was left alone:

  I tried to speak to you on the night of the 8th. Sonny Boy is fine. We had a jolly good time together from 6.15 pm to 9.15 pm. He read your letter with grunts, smiles, laughs, and several yes and no to the questions you had posed. Then he read his mother’s letter. He has scribbled a note to you and one to Leila and will be writing you longer letters in the week. The only moment of sadness was when it was time to part company. I told him that you will be visiting him which made him do a few of his goodie yippee noises. But he is longing for your visit as he is from his mother. One definite conclusion I’ve come to is that he is settling down well and fine and by the end of the month will have developed bonds with the school. He likes his teachers, he has friends among his classmates, he likes Radhika and believes she is fond of him. He likes his studies and believes he is ‘head and feet’ above his classmates.

  George

  Both Leila and Sannu, stayed for some weeks with us in Srinagar that summer of 1984, where George Sahib felt Leila recuperated, and Sannu was leading a carefree life in a house full of children and guests. My notes to George Sahib from Srinagar refer to my husband Ashok’s ouster as Planning Commissioner by Chief Minister Gul Shah, and his loss of the trappings of officialdom which had impressed Sannu who seemed to love sarkari bandobast (government arrangements):

  You must be with Sannu. I wish him all the happiness in the world. I am writing him a letter tonight sending photographs he took in Srinagar. Tell him Uncle Ashok now has no flag, driver, peon and authority but he is happy and fighting, and fighting for what is right, and being angry about what is wrong. Such tough things we adults try to teach him when all he wants is a hamburger and some fun!

  News from Kashmir House is that 6 Congi’s have gone over to FA [Farooq Abdullah] so he has said he has a majority. No clear or confirmed news.

  Sometimes I think the only reason you depend on me is because I am a crazy kind of person who has said and done things for you which no one else does in your kind of life. Must be lots of people like me–nothing extraordinary–but you haven’t had anyone tangle themselves up in your life the way I do–too informally, taking things for granted, putting myself wholeheartedly out there where others may not. I only see myself perhaps as silly, but helpful like my mother and with some grandiose ideas.

  Jaya

  ~

  George Fernandes’s periodic nudges didn’t have much impact on me although I worked to support him in his political endeavours. I was not ready for a more direct involvement in politics and thought that all I needed was to give my time to my family, and craftspersons. But what I saw and experienced later in 1984, was a major turning point in my life.

  *Operation Blue Star was an Army offensive by the central government between 1–8 June 1984, to remove Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale and his followers stationed inside the Golden Temple, Amritsar. The offensive led to the death of not only Bhindranwale and militants but also that of civilians and army personnel.

  *A Srinagar–New Delhi Indian Airlines flight was hijacked and forced to land in Lahore, Pakistan, in July 1984.

  12

  THE HORRORS OF AN ORWELLIAN YEAR

  Towards No Closure

  AS SAID PREVIOUSLY, IT WASN’T that George Fernandes’s scribbled proddings were the only source of influence on me to get into active politics. It took some time and that too at a subconscious level for them to have any effect, if at
all, on me. I clearly saw the need to influence public policy through politicians and the bureaucracy to save and preserve the livelihoods of millions of artisans and their traditional skills. No one ever raised their issues in Parliament. I was, however, still distancing myself from the political world, despite occasional activist forays.

  Then came 31 October 1984. My niece Nandika and I were driving towards Chanakyapuri (in New Delhi) around 10.30 am. The roads were strangely empty and quiet. Typical of the shoddiness of the Public Works Department, a wrongly painted sign was hanging on a barricade across the entrance of Safdarjung Road. It said ‘MENAT WORK’ [sic]. It has remained in my memory ever since for the resemblance that innocent phrase had with what was to come, what we did not expect, what was to begin on the evening following the news of Indira Gandhi’s assassination, and what, for some, is yet to end.

  As we returned home, news spread that Indira Gandhi had been shot. Rumours, shreds of news, and tension built rapidly one upon another by the hour, until finally it became clear that she had been assassinated by two of her own security guards who were Sikhs. The danger of revenge and retribution seemed obvious to many of us. We also heard that Giani Zail Singh, the then President of India, awaited swearing Rajiv Gandhi in as prime minister. That was a lot to digest all at once.

  There was an unfathomable anxiety, a sense of unease, but what we did not do was to worry about the Sikh community as a whole. After all, who worried about the Hindus when Mahatma Gandhi was shot by a Hindu? We witnessed shock, sorrow, indifference, dismay, but mostly, we saw silence like an all-pervading pall on the streets.

  We saw groups shouting slogans. Ashok and I decided to drive from where we were staying with my mother at Sujan Singh Park towards Lodhi Road to see what was happening. We saw three trucks full of men in white kurta pyjamas and white Nehru caps. (I have hated calling them Gandhi topis when Gandhi never wore any; this was Nehru’s style.) They were driving past shouting, khoon ka badla khoon se lenge (we will avenge blood with blood) in unison. As far as we could see, there was no spontaneity about it as was claimed by the Congress party subsequently. There was a car in flames in the middle of the road in front of Safdarjung Tomb. Stabbing and stoning of Sikhs had started at 6.30 pm at the junction of Safdarjung Road and Lodhi Road too. Mobs of ten to fifteen young men aimed at vehicles carrying Sikhs. At 7 pm, we drove up to a policeman conducting traffic at this junction. Five vehicles were burning around us.

  ‘Stop them from stoning,’ we shouted.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he assured us soothingly. ‘You are all right. They are only after the sardars.’

  ‘Does that mean they should not be stopped?’ we shouted again.

  ‘Drive on,’ he commanded. ‘The police will come.’

  Two Sikhs on a two-wheeler near the Safdarjung Flyover were about to be attacked in front of us. We protected them by escorting them to Sujan Singh Park and suggested we drop them home in Lajpat Nagar. ‘Leave your two-wheeler at our place,’ we suggested. As we drove them towards Lajpat Nagar, a huge mob was advancing towards us on the road. We told our passengers to hide in the back, turned the car around at top speed and drove back. The Sikhs crouched below the back seat till we reached the Tughlak Road Police Station where we insisted the police assure us they would be taken home safely in a police van.

  Those men did not return to collect their two-wheeler from us for three months. We never asked each other’s names.

  In the meanwhile, we received phone calls that Sikhs were distributing sweets, and gurdwaras were celebrating with lights, and that the Sikhs had poisoned the water supply in Delhi. For that entire night of 31 October, the next day, the day after, and up to the early hours of 3 November, smoke filled the skies of the capital city of India. I recall M.J. Akbar, the well-known author and journalist, sitting with us at our Sujan Singh Park house and remarking that others would now realize what happens when specific communities are targeted for the misdemeanours of some.

  I was upset to the extent that I felt like I had to do something more. George Fernandes informed me of a peace march organized by politicians like Chandra Shekhar, Madhu Dandavate, Swami Agnivesh, himself and a host of others. I joined them, and we traversed through the Ring Road, via Lajpat Nagar, Ashram and Bhogal, watching Sikh taxi drivers, shopkeepers and residents stunned and tearful their smouldering establishments. What comfort could we give them? What could we say? We were too shocked ourselves. Victims told us mobs had come armed with voters’ lists deliberately picking out Sikhs. ‘Iron rods’, ‘burning tyres’, ‘inflammable white powder’ were repeatedly described in countless affidavits, as implements used to kill and burn throughout Delhi.

  ‘Police?’ We asked.

  ‘Can you see anyone around?’ was the reply.

  Janata Party leaders went back to their offices and homes to make frantic calls to the President of India, the home minister, the police commissioner, anyone they could think of, and issued appeals to stop the senseless killing, looting and arson by calling in the army. Phone calls remained unanswered and no action was taken. Common citizens were forming protective groups; Sikhs did not attack Hindus. It was clear that the attacks were a diabolically organized, one-sided pogrom against the Sikh community by well-prepared mobs of lumpen led by local leaders. India has not been short of riots, and many of a certain ideological variety now like to speak of Gujarat 2002 in the same breath. As a first-hand witness from the very first hour of these tragic events, till the traumatized were at least physically, if not emotionally, rehabilitated, I can solemnly swear there can be no comparison. But that’s a story for another chapter. This worse-than-fascist mass attack on a single community as revenge for the killing of their leader was something we had never seen before nor imagined could happen in a free and civilized India.

  Meanwhile, some of us who were not directly in any political party gathered at Lajpat Bhavan and formed the ‘Nagrik Ekta Manch’ where we discussed what should be done to provide immediate relief to those affected. I also continued participating in actions planned at the Janata Party office by senior leaders.

  On 2 November, Madhu Dandavate, Surendra Mohan and I went to the late Indira Gandhi’s residence from the Janata Party office to speak to someone directly. The guards refused to let us in even though Dandavate had been a senior minister in the Janata government and a respected MP. After a while, Congress MP Arun Nehru came and spoke to us over the top of the closed gate. We asked him to call out the army urgently to stop the carnage. He muttered a few meaningless sounds like ‘hunn’ and ‘haa’ (translated to ‘yes, yes’), meant to reassure us, and went away.

  ~

  During this Orwellian year of 1984 till January 1985, I headed a relief camp—the Farash Bazar Relief camp—for three months. Thereafter, I had authored a report* with regard to my experiences around the riot victims on behalf of the Nagrik Ekta Manch. It is now a part of many archival sets on the Internet. Going through it brought back the immediacy of those days in vivid detail. Much of what I will relate here is a replication or paraphrasing of sections of the report. I still have my original, old, faded, cyclostyled, typed-on-a-typewriter copy, which has minor corrections and sub-titles handwritten by Ashok. The direct quotes here are in italics to which I have added some other remembrances.

  On the morning of 3rd November, the government’s focus turned to the funeral of Mrs Gandhi with every force and dignitary involved in the arrangements. As the funeral took place, some members of the Nagrik Ekta Manch came upon the horror of burned bodies lying in the narrow streets of Trilokpuri, a trans-Yamuna resettlement colony not far from what was still the industrial complex of Noida. We came across people hiding in the charred remains of their homes having had no food, water or protection from marauding mobs for two nights and a day.

  My son, Akshay, then 14 years old, stayed with me as we helped the police who had finally arrived and called buses to take the victims to a relief camp. At least our frustration and anger of the past three days could no
w be channelled into organizing clothes, medicines and food supplies for them.

  Our team of volunteers took some victims to AIIMS, Akshay went with other volunteers who found a truck and took rounds in the city to ask for relief materials. Bundles of clothes, and sacks full of wheat flour and medicines were brought to where we were guided to proceed—the Farash Bazar Police Station complex (which housed the relief camp):

  The Farash Bazar Naya Thana was a police station and residential police colony adjacent to Jhilmil Colony in the Shahdara area. It had 144 rooms, 72 kitchens and 72 balconies most of which were opened for the refugees, the others being full of stores and supplies. At its peak, the camp had almost 3000 people, which meant 20 to a room. Balconies and kitchen corridors were crowded with refugees—the new born [my son helped to shield a woman behind an old sari in the lawns while she delivered her baby at midnight], the sick, the old, and the injured [men had their heads split open]—but at least it was shelter.

  I must add and emphasize here what I wrote in the report about a certain police officer:

  For all the absence of the police and the ensuing nightmare in Trilokpuri, Station House Officer [SHO] Daryao Singh showed he was of a different sort. He had sent his men to rescue the living on the 3rd and had brought them to his police station without any instructions from higher authorities.

  I have no idea whether one of the very few caring policemen, Daryao Singh, was ever recognized or honoured for his act of courage and compassion. It was unlikely under the very regime that caused the mayhem. Maybe, his deeds were conveniently swept under the carpet.

  On November 4th we organized rations, a team of six doctors and collected out-sized cooking vessels from tent houses. A team began to work immediately on an aspect which proved to be of utmost importance—the listing of people (men, women, children, babies) in the camp, in each room. We compiled lists of missing persons and identified those needing immediate medical attention. We distributed rounds of clothes as they came in—one piece each, then sets each, extra woolens for the children, elderly and sick. Every one of the 3000 refugees had spare clothes, soap to wash off blood stains, a hot meal, drinking water, and tea by the end of the day (5th November). The Nagrik Ekta Manch had by then contacted the newly appointed relief committee official, the magistrate on duty, the Municipal Corporation, and the Red Cross arrived. Last but not least, unwelcome visitors arrived such as the SHO of Kalyanpuri and a local activist …whom the refugees immediately identified as being among their attackers.