Incendiary Circumstances

by Amitav Ghosh

  Once the plane had sliced through the dark blanket of Rangoon's monsoon sky, the cabin filled with the whine of laptops logging on—that familiar buzzing sound, not unlike that of mosquitoes feasting in midflight.

  THE GHOSTS OF MRS. GANDHI 1995

  NOWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD did the year 1984 fulfill its apocalyptic portents as it did in India. Separatist violence in the Punjab; the military attack on the great Sikh temple of Amritsar; the assassination of the prime minister, Mrs. Indira Gandhi; riots in several cities; the gas disaster in Bhopal—the events followed relentlessly on each other. There were days in 1984 when it took courage to open the New Delhi papers in the morning.

  Of the year's many catastrophes, the sectarian violence following Gandhi's death had the greatest effect on my life. Looking back, I see that the experiences of that period were profoundly important to my development as a writer, so much so that I have never attempted to write about them until now.

  At the time I was living in a part of New Delhi called Defence Colony—a neighborhood of large, labyrinthine houses, with little self-contained warrens of servants' rooms tucked away on rooftops and above garages. When I lived there, these rooms had come to house a floating population of the young and straitened—journalists, copywriters, minor executives, and university people like myself. We battened upon this wealthy enclave like mites in a honeycomb, spreading from rooftop to rooftop, our ramshackle lives curtained from our landlords by chiffon-draped washing lines and thickets of TV aerials.

  I was twenty-eight. The city I considered home was Calcutta, but New Delhi was where I had spent all my adult life, except for a few years away in England and Egypt. I had returned to India two years before, upon completing a doctorate at Oxford, and recently found a teaching job at Delhi University. But it was in the privacy of my baking rooftop hutch that my real life was lived. I was writing my first novel, in the classic fashion, perched in a garret.

  On the morning of October 31, the day of Mrs. Gandhi's death, I caught a bus to Delhi University as usual, at about half past nine. From where I lived it took an hour and a half: a long commute, but not an exceptional one for New Delhi. The assassination had occurred shortly before, just a few miles away, but I had no knowledge of this when I boarded the bus. Nor did I notice anything untoward at any point during the ninety-minute journey. But the news, traveling by word of mouth, raced my bus to the university.

  When I walked into the grounds, I saw not the usual boisterous, Frisbee-throwing crowd of students but small groups of people standing intently around transistor radios. A young man detached himself from one of the huddles and approached me, his mouth twisted into the tight-lipped, knowing smile that seems always to accompany the gambit "Have you heard...?"

  The campus was humming, he said. No one knew for sure, but it was being said that Mrs. Gandhi had been shot. The word was that she had been assassinated by two Sikh bodyguards, in revenge for her having sent troops to raid the Sikhs' Golden Temple of Amritsar earlier that year.

  Just before stepping into the lecture room, I heard a report on All India Radio, the national network: Mrs. Gandhi had been rushed to hospital after an attempted assassination.

  Nothing stopped; the momentum of the daily routine carried things forward. I went into a classroom and began my lecture, but not many students had shown up, and those who had were distracted and distant; there was a lot of fidgeting.

  Halfway through the class, I looked out through the room's single, slitlike window. The sunlight lay bright on the lawn below and on the trees beyond. It was the time of year when Delhi was at its best, crisp and cool, its abundant greenery freshly watered by the recently retreated monsoons, its skies washed sparking clean. By the time I turned back, I had forgotten what I was saying and had to reach for my notes.

  My unsteadiness surprised me. I was not an uncritical admirer of Mrs. Gandhi. Her brief period of semi-dictatorial rule in the mid-seventies was still alive in my memory. But the ghastliness of her murder was a sudden reminder of the very real qualities that had been taken for granted: her fortitude, her dignity, her physical courage, her endurance.

  Yet it was not just grief I felt at that moment. Rather, it was a sense of something coming loose, of a mooring untied somewhere within.

  The first reliable report of Mrs. Gandhi's death was broadcast from Karachi, by Pakistan's official radio network, at around 1:30 P.M. On All India Radio, regular broadcasts had been replaced by music.

  I left the university in the late afternoon with a friend, Hari Sen, who lived at the other end of the city. I needed to make a long-distance phone call, and he had offered to let me use his family's telephone.

  To get to Hari's house, we had to change buses at Connaught Palace, the elegant circular arcade that lies at the geographical heart of Delhi, linking the old city with the new. As the bus swung around the periphery of the arcade, I noticed that the shops, stalls, and eateries were beginning to shut down, even though it was still afternoon.

  Our next bus was not quite full, which was unusual. Just as it was pulling out, a man ran out of an office and jumped on. He was middle-aged and dressed in shirt and trousers, evidently an employee of one of the nearby government buildings. He was a Sikh, but I barely noticed this at the time.

  He probably jumped on without giving the matter any thought, this being his regular, daily bus. But as it happened, on this day no choice could have been more unfortunate, for the route of the bus went past the hospital where Indira Gandhi's body then lay. Certain loyalists in her party had begun inciting the crowd gathered there to seek revenge. The motorcade of Giani Zail Singh, the president of the republic, a Sikh, had already been attacked by a mob.

  None of this was known to us then, and we would never have suspected it; violence had never been directed at the Sikhs in Delhi.

  As the bus made its way down New Delhi's broad, tree-lined avenues, official-looking cars with outriders and escorts overtook us, speeding toward the hospital. As we drew nearer, it became evident that a large number of people had gathered there. But this was no ordinary crowd: it seemed to consist mostly of red-eyed young men in half-unbuttoned shirts. It was now that I noticed that my Sikh fellow passenger was showing signs of increasing anxiety, sometimes standing up to look out, sometimes glancing at the door. It was too late to get off the bus; thugs were everywhere. The bands of young men grew more and more menacing as we approached the hospital. There was a watchfulness about them. Some were armed with steel rods and bicycle chains; others had fanned out across the busy road and were stopping cars and buses.

  A stout woman in a sari sitting across the aisle from me was the first to understand what was going on. Rising to her feet, she gestured urgently at the Sikh, who was sitting hunched in his seat. She hissed at him in Hindi, telling him to get down and keep out of sight.

  The man started in surprise and squeezed himself into the narrow footspace between the seats. Minutes later our bus was intercepted by a group of young men dressed in bright, sharp synthetics. Several had bicycle chains draped around their wrists. They ran along beside the bus as it slowed to a halt. We heard them call out to the driver through the open door, asking if there were any Sikhs on the bus.

  The driver shook his head. No, he said there were no Sikhs on the bus.

  A few rows ahead of me, the crouching, turbaned figure had gone completely still. Outside, some of the young men were jumping up to look through the windows, asking if there were any Sikhs on the bus. There was no anger in their voices; that was the most chilling thing of all.

  No, someone said, and immediately other voices picked up the refrain. Soon all the passengers were shaking their heads and saying, No, no, let us go now, we have to get home.

  Eventually the thugs stepped back and waved us through. Nobody said a word as we sped away down Ring Road.

  Hari Sen lived in one of New Delhi's recently developed residential colonies. It was called Safdarjang Enclave, and it was neatly and solidly middle-class, a neighbor
hood of aspirations rather than opulence. Like most such New Delhi suburbs, the area has a mixed population; Sikhs were well represented.

  A long street ran from end to end of the neighborhood, like the spine of a comb, with parallel side streets running off it. Hari lived at the end of one of those streets, in a fairly typical big one-story bungalow. The house next door, however, was much grander and uncharacteristically daring in design. An angular structure, it was perched rakishly on stilts. Mr. Bawa, the owner, was an elderly Sikh who had spent a long time abroad, working with various international organizations. For several years he had resided in Southeast Asia; thus the stilts.

  Hari lived with his family in a household so large and eccentric that it had come to be known among his friends as Macondo, after Gabriel García Márquez's magical village. On this occasion, however, only his mother and teenage sister were at home. I decided to stay over.

  The next morning was very bright. When I stepped out into the sunshine, I came upon a sight that I could never have imagined. In every direction columns of smoke rose slowly into a limpid sky. Sikh houses and businesses were burning. The fires were so carefully targeted that they created an impression quite different from that of a general conflagration: it was like looking upward into the vault of some vast pillared hall.

  The columns of smoke increased in number even as I stood outside watching. Some were burning a short distance away. I spoke to a passerby and learned that several nearby Sikh houses had been looted and set on fire that morning. The mob had started at the far end of the colony and was working its way in our direction. Hindus or Muslims who had sheltered or defended Sikhs were also being attacked; their houses were being looted and burned.

  It was still and quiet, eerily so. The usual sounds of rush-hour traffic were absent. But every so often we heard a speeding car or motorcycle on the main street. Later we discovered that these mysterious speeding vehicles were instrumental in directing the carnage that was taking place. Protected by certain politicians, "organizers" were zooming around the city, assembling "mobs" and transporting them to Sikh-owned houses and shops.

  Apparently the transportation was provided free. A civil rights report published shortly afterward stated that this phase of the violence "began with the arrival of groups of armed young people in tempo vans, motorcycles, scooters or trucks," and went on to say, "With cans of petrol they went around the localities and systematically set fire to Sikh houses, shops and gurdwaras ... The targets were primarily young Sikhs. They were dragged out, beaten up and then burnt alive ... In all the affected spots, a calculated attempt to terrorize the people was evident in the common tendency among the assailants to burn alive the Sikhs on public roads."

  Fire was everywhere; it was the day's motif. Throughout the city, Sikh houses were being looted and set on fire, often with their occupants still inside.

  A survivor—a woman who lost her husband and three sons—offered the following account to Veena Das, a Delhi sociologist: "Some people, the neighbors, one of my relatives, said it would be better if we hid in an abandoned house nearby. So my husband took our three sons and hid there. We locked the house from outside, but there was treachery in people's hearts. Someone must have told the crowd. They baited him to come out. Then they poured kerosene on that house. They burnt them alive. When I went there that night, the bodies of my sons were on the loft—huddled together."

  Over the next few days, some twenty-five hundred people died in Delhi alone. Thousands more died in other cities. The total death toll will never be known. The dead were overwhelmingly Sikh men. Entire neighborhoods were gutted; tens of thousands of people were left homeless.

  Like many other members of my generation, I grew up believing that mass slaughter of the type that followed the partition of India and Pakistan, in 1947, could never happen again. But that morning, in the city of Delhi, the violence had reached the same level of intensity.

  As Hari and I stood staring into the smoke-streaked sky, Mrs. Sen, Hari's mother, was thinking of matters closer at hand. She was about fifty, a tall, graceful woman with a gentle, soft-spoken manner. In an understated way, she was also deeply religious, a devout Hindu. When she heard what was happening, she picked up the phone and called Mr. and Mrs. Bawa, the elderly Sikh couple next door, to let them know that they were welcome to come over. She met with an unexpected response: an awkward silence. Mrs. Bawa thought she was joking, and wasn't sure whether to be amused or not.

  Toward midday Mrs. Sen received a phone call: the mob was now in the immediate neighborhood, advancing systematically from street to street. Hari decided that it was time to go over and have a talk with the Bawas. I went along.

  Mr. Bawa proved to be a small, slight man. Although he was casually dressed, his turban was neatly tied and his beard was carefully combed and bound. He was puzzled by our visit. After a polite greeting, he asked what he could do for us. It fell to Hari to explain.

  Mr. Bawa had heard about Indira Gandhi's assassination, of course, and he knew that there had been some trouble. But he could not understand why these "disturbances" should impinge on him or his wife. He had no more sympathy for the Sikh terrorists than we did; his revulsion at the assassination was, if anything, even greater than ours. Not only was his commitment to India and the Indian state absolute, but it was evident from his bearing that he belonged to the country's ruling elite.

  How do you explain to someone who has spent a lifetime co-cooned in privilege that a potentially terminal rent has appeared in the wrappings? We found ourselves faltering. Mr. Bawa could not bring himself to believe that a mob might attack him.

  By the time we left, it was Mr. Bawa who was mouthing reassurances. He sent us off with jovial pats on our backs. He did not actually say "Buck up," but his manner said it for him.

  We were confident that the government would soon act to stop the violence. In India there is a drill associated with civil disturbances; a curfew is declared; paramilitary units are deployed; in extreme cases the army marches to the stricken areas. No city in India is better equipped to perform this drill than New Delhi, with its huge security apparatus. We later learned that in some cities—Calcutta, for example—the state authorities did act promptly to prevent violence. But in New Delhi and in much of northern India, hour followed hour without a response. Every few minutes we tuned to the radio, hoping to hear that the army had been ordered out. All we heard was mournful music and descriptions of Mrs. Gandhi's lying in state, of the comings and goings of dignitaries, foreign and national. The bulletins could have been messages from another planet.

  As the afternoon progressed, we continued to hear reports of the mob's steady advance. Before long it had reached the next alley; we could hear the voices; the smoke was everywhere. There was still no sign of the army or the police.

  Hari again called Mr. Bawa, and now, with the flames visible from his windows, he was more receptive. He agreed to come over with his wife, just for a short while. But there was a problem: how? The two properties were separated by a shoulder-high wall, so it was impossible to walk from one house to the other except along the street.

  I spotted a few of the thugs already at the end of the street. We could hear the occasional motorcycle cruising slowly up and down. The Bawas could not risk stepping out into the street. They would be seen; the sun had dipped low in the sky, but it was still light. Mr. Bawa balked at the thought of climbing over the wall; it seemed an insuperable obstacle at his age. But eventually Hari persuaded him to try.

  We went to wait for them at the back of the Sens' house, in a spot that was well sheltered from the street. The mob seemed terrifyingly close, the Bawas reckless in their tardiness. A long time passed before the elderly couple finally appeared, hurrying toward us.

  Mr. Bawa had changed before leaving the house: he was neatly dressed, dapper, even, in blazer and cravat. Mrs. Bawa, a small, matronly woman, was dressed in a salwar and kameez. Their cook was with them, and it was with his assistance that they had made it over
the wall. The cook, who was Hindu, then returned to the house to stand guard.

  Hari lead the Bawas into the drawing room, where Mrs. Sen was waiting, dressed in a chiffon sari. The room was large and well appointed, its walls hung with a rare and beautiful set of miniatures. With the curtains now drawn and the lamps lit, it was warm and welcoming. But all that lay between us and the mob in the street was a row of curtained French windows and a garden wall.

  Mrs. Sen greeted the elderly couple with folded hands as they came in. The three seated themselves in an intimate circle, and soon a silver tea tray appeared. Instantly all constraint evaporated, and to the tinkling of porcelain, the conversation turned to the staples of New Delhi drawing-room chatter.

  I could not bring myself to sit down. I stood in the corridor, distracted, looking out through the front entrance.

  A couple of scouts on motorcycles had drawn up next door. They had dismounted and were inspecting the house, walking in among the concrete stilts, looking up into the house. Somehow they got wind of the cook's presence and called him out.

  The cook was very frightened. He was surrounded by thugs thrusting knives in his face and shouting questions. It was dark, and some were carrying kerosene torches. Wasn't it true, they shouted, that his employers were Sikhs? Where were they? Were they hiding inside? Who owned the house—Hindus or Sikhs?

  Hari and I hid behind the wall between the two houses and listened to the interrogation. Our fates depended on this lone, frightened man. We had no idea what he would do—of how secure the Bawas were of his loyalties, or whether he might seek revenge for some past slight by revealing their whereabouts. If he did, both houses would burn.