Colours of Violence

by Kakar, Sudhir

  In the mohallas where Majid Khan and others of his kind live, there are not too many who would go along with their characterization as goondas by the police and upper middle-class sentiment. Unsurprisingly, the men do not have a name for themselves, although they would prefer a descriptive phrase such as ‘friend of the poor’ or ‘protector of the oppressed’. A name would categorize them, separate them from the rest of the community, take them out of the ocean in which they swim as big fish but nonetheless constitute a vital part of the ocean’s ecology. The only name they are not reluctant to accept and which is also acceptable to others, including the police, is pehlwan. Specifically, pehlwan is a wrestler, but generally it may also mean a ‘strong man’; the purpose for which the strength is employed is left ambiguous and open to the interpretation of different groups. So let me call them pehlwans (rather than goondas, hooligans, rowdies, history sheeters), whether or not they have actually trained as wrestlers or bodybuilders, although a surprisingly large number have done so. Indeed, it is the culture of traditional Indian wrestling, which I will discuss later, which has had a profound influence in the formation of their personalities and which constitutes the most distinctive marker of their identities.

  Strictly speaking, then, Majid Khan is not a pehlwan although he went through a few years of training as a wrestler, the taleem, as a boy. His younger brother is the well-known Mumtaz pehlwan and many of the young men who hang around him, his men, are aspiring pehlwans who follow the wrestler’s daily regimen. He is, though, a great admirer of the whole wrestling ethos which he feels builds character and prevents young men from going astray. He feels distressed that traditional wrestling is coming to an end in Hyderabad, and young men are drawn more to such imports as judo and karate. The Japanese martial arts are just that, arts to be picked up without the necessity of being steeped in and internalizing the culture which underlies them. The reasons for the decline of wrestling are many. Primarily, economic deterioration makes it difficult for a family to let one of their sons turn into a pehlwan, since he would then need an expensive diet of pistachios, almonds, choice cuts of meat, and litres of milk every day. Then the Hindu–Muslim tensions have led the police to ban wrestling matches in the city, since a bout between a Hindu and a Muslim wrestler can easily ignite a riot between the two communities. Only ten per cent of the pehlwans are involved in violence,’ Majid said. ‘In fact becoming a pehlwan improves the character and disposition of many young men who are otherwise inclined to be violent and intemperate. When four people respectfully salute you as pehlwan as you walk down the street, you would hold your head high and wouldn’t do anything to lose that respect.’

  Majid describes his own role in the riots primarily in terms of a peacemaker, an older mentor with some influence on young hotheads of the Muslim community, especially in Karwan. He is generally successful in calming violent passions and excited crowds. ‘It is not so easy to control these boys,’ he says in mock sorrow as he indulgently smiles at the adoring young chamcha. ‘Without any provocation, these young men are taken in by the police during a riot who register murder cases against them. Released on bail, they come out swaggering, as if they really are killers and have become equal to the pehlwans. The police have notarized them as killers and what better credentials can they have?’ Majid Khan believes a major part of his role during the riot lies in curbing young ‘killers’ who want to show off their killing prowess, he prevents the consolidation of a killer identity, as the psychologist would say in the discipline’s language. Personally, Majid Khan said, he has never experienced any kind of blood lust even during the worst course of religious violence. This does not mean that he is some kind of a believer in nonviolence when there are riots between the Hindus and the Muslims. He is not a fanatic either way as far as violence is concerned. He has a ‘healthy’ attitude toward the mutual slaughter, an outlook he states as the following: ‘Riots are like one-day cricket matches where the killings are the runs. You have to score at least one more than the opposing team. The whole honour of your nation (qaum) depends on not scoring less than the opponent.’

  The other part of his role during a riot consists in liaising with the police and the administration on behalf of the community and in organizing and distributing relief supplies on behalf of his party, the Majlis. Although some accuse him of pilferage (‘of the ten bags of rice he keeps seven’) and thus of enriching himself on the misery of others, Majid Khan is sincerely eloquent on the great human suffering caused by every riot and about his own modest efforts at its relief. I have the impression that Majid Khan feels much more comfortable talking about human suffering than violence, about the fellowship of misery than the divisions of murderous ethnocentrism. Losing loved ones, seeing one’s house and meagre belongings go up in flames, the whimpering of children in hunger and fear, is a shared experience of Muslims and Hindus alike and, after all, he is talking to me, a Hindu. Talk of suffering during the riots brings the two of us closer in mutual human sympathy whereas an elaboration on the violence will divide, will keep reminding us of our potential as deadly enemies.

  In an earlier meeting with Sahba, who is a Muslim, there had been an absence of constraints imposed by my alien Hindu presence, and Majid Khan had talked freely about his more Muslim sentiments. The Muslims never initiated any attacks; they only defended themselves. They are discriminated against in every field and the police oppression is making the whole community mutinous (baghi). One day they will rise up to fight, even against the modern weapons of the police. After all, there are only four fighting communities in India: Sikhs, Marathas, Rajputs, and Muslims. Even badly outnumbered Muslims can hold their own against a far superior Hindu host as long as the police do not turn their guns against them. But this situation too will change. There is nothing like a riot to unite the community and strengthen its collective will for the fight ahead of it.

  Testing the Tigers

  The Giessen Test (Appendix 1) is one of the most widespread test instruments in clinical use in Germany today.1 Constructed on psychoanalytic and psychosocial considerations, its forty statements are divided into six scales: social response, dominance, self-control, underlying mood, permeability, and social potence. Using it to systematically tap the self-image of the pehlwans, the characteristics each ascribed to himself, I found the test to be a particularly useful interview tool which helped me gain a more comprehensive view of the ‘warriors’ in a relatively short period of time. The pehlwans often did not restrict themselves to just marking off an alternative on a statement but would generally elaborate, offering anecdotes from their lives as illustrations. Thus, for instance, in response to a statement, Majid Khan did not simply say, ‘I am very patient’ but went on to add: ‘I had to learn patience, the hard way,’ and then narrated an incident from his life where he had suffered because he could not control his temper.

  In the first area, social response, which has to do with the person’s effect on his environment—whether one is narcissistically gratified or frustrated in social interactions—Majid Khan sees himself as evoking positive responses on the social stage. He finds it easy to attract others and believes people are highly satisfied with his work. He cares greatly about looking nice and feels he has been successful in achieving his aims in life.

  In the area of dominance, which on one side has to do with aggressiveness, impulsiveness, stubbornness, and authoritarian tendencies, and on the other with an incapacity for aggression, patience, willingness to conform and the tendency to submit, Majid Khan comes across as particularly dominant and self-willed although he tries hard to control his impatience in public life.

  As far as self-control is concerned, Majid Khan is more uncontrolled than compulsive, but not to an extent that would signal delinquency or sociopathic tendencies. It is, however, evident that Majid Khan has a problem in dealing with his aggressive impulses. He has a tendency to let out his anger easily which he struggles to control, lest it break out in episodes of unchecked rage and bouts of viole
nce.

  Although Majid lets out his anger and is not at all timid, there are strong indications of an underlying depressive mood. He tends to worry a good deal about personal problems, lets outer changes greatly affect his emotional state, and is often depressed. Coupled with his difficulties with self-control and the fact that he finds it very easy to get into high spirits, I would suspect a disposition where hyperactivity compensates for and sometimes alternates with a dysphoric mood and where there is a marked tendency to blow a fuse in tense situations.

  As far as permeability is concerned—the fundamental ways in which the outer world is experienced and how open or closed the person is in interaction with others—Majid Khan sees himself as very trusting and experiences strong feelings in love. Yet he also finds it very hard to come out of his shell, gives away very little of himself, and avoids getting close to another person. The fact that this is true only of personal relations and does not happen in the public sphere, where he can work well with others, would lead one to suspect disturbances in the development of his sense of basic trust and in an openness to his own feelings. It is as if the early contacts with the world were not positive, generating a fear of a hostile environment which led to a defensive closing up and guarding of the core self. I sense in Majid Khan an anxiety about being exploited and abused if he ever opened himself fully to another human being. This way, though he may remain emotionally isolated, he also cannot be destroyed by others. This hypothesis is supported by his responses to other statements in the questionnaire such as that he finds it relatively hard to feel tied to someone for long, that is, he is fearful of personal commitment. He thus comes across as someone who mimics trust and affection without deeply feeling them, something he does quite successfully in his public life since he confesses to being very good at acting and not too particular about truth.

  The Violent Poet

  Unlike Majid Khan, Akbar is a true pehlwan. He has been trained as a wrestler since the age of ten and comes from a family where for the last four generations the men have all been wrestlers. Among the Hindus, he is notorious as a killer while many Muslims approvingly acknowledge his role in the organization of the community’s violence during the riots. Living in a large house with four wrestler brothers and their families, a widowed mother, and three wives, Akbar is a prosperous man who owns a hotel and three taleemkhanas, as the wrestling gymnasiums are called in Urdu. Like most other pehlwans, the chief source of his income is what the pehlwans delicately describe as ‘land business’.

  Baldly stated, ‘land business’ is one of the outcomes of India’s crumbling legal system. Since landlord and tenant disputes as well as other disputes about land and property can take well over a decade to be sorted out if a redress of grievance is sought through the courts, the pehlwan is approached by one of the parties to the dispute to evict or otherwise intimidate the opposing party. The dispute being thus ‘settled’ the pehlwan receives a large fee for his services. In the case of well-known pehlwans with taleemkhanas (or the Hindu akharas) and thus a large supply of young toughs as students and all-purpose assistants, land business can be very profitable. Many of the pehlwans do not need to use strong-arm methods any longer. The mere fact that a famous pehlwan like Akbar has been engaged by one of the parties is enough for the opponent to back down and reach a settlement to the dispute. In some cases, and these are on the increase, if the second party also employs a pehlwan to protect its interests, then the two pehlwans generally get together and come to a mutually satisfactory solution which, because of the fear they arouse, they can impose on their clients. Built on the threat of physical violence, overt violence is rare in this informal system where a black legality, like a black economy, runs parallel to the state’s legal system, and violence occurs only when new pehlwans try to muscle into the territories of established ‘tigers’, as the pehlwans also like to call themselves, threatening their vital interests and inviting swift reprisals. At least among the Muslim pehlwans, Akbar is a tiger’s tiger, a well-respected man who is a figure of awe for his prowess as a wrestler, success in the land business, and the high esteem in which he is held by his community. A political career is on the cards. Akbar has been asked to and plans to stand for the state legislature elections on the platform of the Muslim party.

  The history sheet of the police, though, is not a respecter of success or sentiment. It goes on to call him a chronic ‘rowdy’ and to list a succession of dates, beginning in the early 1960s, and a few laconic lines in front of the date for the offence committed. Akbar was first convicted of sexual harassment when he was twenty years old—‘Eve teasing of a girl’—as the police history sheet puts it—and was fined ten rupees by the court. A few months later, he came to the attention of the police on a charge of physical assault; the complainant failed to press charges because, the police suspect, Akbar intimidated the victim. He was then suspected of snatching a gold chain, but the first serious crime for which he was sentenced to a couple of years in prison was assaulting a special police party, ‘causing grievous injury’. There follows a succession of charges of assault, stabbing, kidnapping, and wrongful confinement, most of them in connection with land deals, although he is acquitted every time either because the witnesses or the complainant or both are too scared to give evidence against him in court. A long list of arrests, orders of externment and removal from the city for specified periods, and short jail sentences (many of which he circumvented by getting himself admitted to the prison hospital) follows in monotonous detail.

  What is now striking about his record are his increasing confrontations with the police. Abuse of police personnel, threats, and a couple of assaults on police officers are actions which the Hyderabad police, like the police of any other city in the world, view with particular disfavour and on which they come down severely. What is not mentioned in the record is that these confrontations with the police are often in the context of Hindu–Muslim violence where Akbar is seen to be defending Muslim interests in a clear-cut and unambiguous manner by putting his body on the line. This wins him many admirers in the community, especially among the young. And then something strange happens. The rowdy is recruited into the police ranks, undergoes training and is appointed as a police constable in the armed police, something which can only happen as one of the minor fallouts of a political deal struck by the Majlis with the ruling Congress party at that particular time. Akbar’s police career is cut short when he is dismissed for threatening to kill an assistant police commissioner during one of the riots in the seventies. He assaulted a police inspector and landed in jail again, this time for one year of imprisonment. He spents a large part of this sentence in the prison hospital where he continued to be active. Cases of wrongful confinement, assault, and extraction of money are registered as having been organized by Akbar from his hospital bed.

  For about a decade now, though, Akbar’s history sheet is clean. Akbar is becoming increasingly busy in the political arena and is no longer personally involved in any of the street and mohalla violence. He is no more a soldier but is suspected of being a general and one of the chief organizers of Muslim violence during a riot. The police, in their written summary which reveals an aversion to pronouns, concede: ‘Is very popular. Called pehlwan in his locality. Has earned a lot of money in land business. Many local people approach for settlement of domestic problems and civil disputes which he settles amicably. Has car and properties and income from house rents and hotels. Trains many people of locality in wrestling. Of late not involved in any criminal cases. However, close watch is being maintained on his activities.’

  Akbar questioned Sahba closely when she first met him. He wanted to know the names of the people who had mentioned his name, how she knew his student who had brought her to him, the number of visits she had made to the Karwan area and what the people had said about politics, religion, and violence. He was guarded at first and reluctant to talk, asking why it was necessary to interview him and why he should believe that Sahba was a Muslim
except that her dress, face, and ways of carrying herself and talking gave her away as a Muslim. After all his bitter experiences in life, he found it difficult to trust people. If people knew about him it was because of the good work he had been doing to uphold the honour (izzat) of the Muslim nation. Once his suspicions were lulled, however, Akbar talked to Sahba freely about himself and his view of Hindu–Muslim relations.

  ‘I am proud to be a Muslim. It is this pride which has carried me through many wrestling competitions I won. My aim in wrestling has not been to achieve fame for myself but to make a name as a Muslim. I always felt thrilled when large numbers of Muslim boys bought tickets because I was fighting in the arena. Each time I defeated a Hindu wrestler, I felt I had not only made a name for myself but for the entire Muslim community, which looked up to me for its honour and fame. I train a lot of Muslim boys in my taleemkhanas. I visit the taleemkhanas occasionally since I have trained others to do the job. But it is done under my close supervision. Apart from wrestling, the boys are also trained to protect themselves from attack by the enemy. They are trained on the condition that they will never misuse the training to unnecessarily harm someone.

  ‘I also teach my disciples to be good Muslims—to respect their parents, elders, neighbours and women. A wrestler’s life is not easy. He has to observe certain rules very strictly. Besides eating a good diet, he must go to bed early and wake up very early in the morning. Alcohol, cigarettes, and pan are absolutely prohibited. He must not drink tea and loaf around on the streets. I myself have strictly followed these rules and even today I do not drink alcohol or tea, smoke or eat pan. To become an example to others, I have undergone a lot of hardship. Today my disciples are very attached to me. If I were to tell them to kill themselves, they would not hesitate for a moment. But they know that their ustad will never ask them for their lives. He only works for their welfare. He wants them to be brave.’