by Mark Tully
On the way to Fatima Bibi's, my driver said to me, ‘Prem Darwaza is one of twelve gates of the old city of Ahmedabad. In the old times they were all closed at eight o'clock in the evening and no one could come in and no one go out. That's why there was some order and peace instead of all this fighting.’ Everywhere I go in India, I find that poorer people hate the lawlessness of today. The squat, sandstone Prem Darwaza was still covered with the detritus of the recent state-assembly elections – posters peeling off the walls and slogans painted in black. The gate itself was now the centre of what was meant to be a roundabout, but my driver – in spite of his views on lawlessness – shot straight through it.
We stopped on the other side of a scooter-rickshaw repair shop to ask for the SEWA khol shop. The mechanics hadn't heard of that, but they pointed to a road which they said was the street of the khol-sellers. I decided it would be quicker to leave the car and walk. I passed a pile of garbage – the overflow from skips provided by the municipality. Two cows were ruminating on rubbish, and a big black bull with a magnificent pair of curved horns was sitting contentedly on top of a pile of garbage. A crow was perched on his floppy hump. I don't know whether it's my imagination or whether Ahmedabad really does have even more stray cows than other Indian cities. Perhaps it's another reflection of the Indianness of the place. An old man with sweat dripping off his grey moustache and a woman who could have been his daughter were bent over the crossbar of a handcart, straining to pull their load of cloth bales. An orange municipal bus – far too wide for the narrow street – hooted angrily at the handcart-pullers, but they refused to give ground.
I soon came to the first shop selling brightly coloured khols and asked for the cooperative's office. The owner pointed down the road without a break in the conversation he was holding. I went on until I came to the first shop where women were in charge, which I rightly assumed belonged to the cooperative. No business was being transacted – there were just two women sorting out enormous sacks of rags. One of them agreed to come with me to Fatima Bibi.
Fatima Bibi lived less than a hundred yards away, in a building constructed of old, wafer-thin, biscuit-like bricks. There was little sign of the mortar which had once held them together, and the walls bulged ominously. We went into an extension built on to the original building, and walked along a muddy passage which the builders had still not provided with a floor. We made our way to an open doorway at the end, which led to steep wooden stairs like a ship's companionway. My guide climbed up, poked her head through a trapdoor and shouted, ‘Is anyone at home?’ Back came the angry reply, ‘We are asleep. Don't come till four o'clock.’ Rebuffed but not discouraged, my guide suggested that I go to a tea shop and return later.
When we eventually gained admission, I saw a stout woman with frizzled grey hair sitting cross-legged on the floor picking stones out of rice for the evening meal. She looked well over fifty, but claimed to be just forty. Fatima Bibi, like the hand-printers, was not fazed by the sudden arrival of a strange foreigner: she was apparently used to inquisitive visitors from SEWA.
Once again I decided to start by asking her about her connection with the cooperative and the work she did.
She said, ‘I joined SEWA out of greed for twenty-five paise. The veparis [traders] gave us one rupee seventy-five paise per khol, and SEWA promised two. Now I only work for SEWA. They also gave me a sewing-machine.’ She pointed to a treadle machine in one corner of the room. ‘We sew fifty khols a week between us and so make 100 rupees. We need the money because my husband has been laid off by the mill where he used to work. That was seven years ago. He didn't get any compensation because he was not in pukka service. I will take these khols to the godown [warehouse] this evening and get the money. Then we can eat. I have to carry them on my head to the godown. I don't like doing that – it makes you like a coolie – but what can I do?’
‘Doesn't the government also offer help to khol workers like you?’ I asked.
‘The government!’ she said scornfully. ‘All they do is shoot us. They just shoot us dead.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘These riots we suffer from – the government's hand is behind them. I tell you, it's all the government's hand.’
I looked round at the small room where she and the other six members of her family had just been incarcerated for nearly a week during the curfew. The floor was made of mud in which were set a few flat stones on which Fatima Bibi was sitting. The only pieces of furniture were one iron bed, two tin trunks and a wooden chest. The clothes of the male members of the family were hung over a string stretched across one corner. A row of teacups hung neatly from hooks in the edge of a wooden shelf. Water was stored in clay pots. Part of the room was shut off by corrugated-iron sheets and a padlocked hardboard door. There was one tube-light suspended precariously from the roof. Fatima Bibi saw me looking up at the sunlight shining through the gaps in the smoke-blackened wooden struts of the roof. She said, ‘Yes, this roof leaks everywhere during the monsoon. There is only one corner where you can sit and keep dry. I am going to ask SEWA for a loan to repair this house, but I don't know whether they will give it to me.’
‘You have just had more riots,’ I said. ‘How did you survive?’
‘With great difficulty. My son couldn't get out to work. He works ironing ready-made garments. He couldn't go to work because he had to pass through a Hindu area. It was even worse because of the fast. My family observed it. I must say I didn't – I won't tell a lie.’
‘Who started the riots this time?’
‘We didn't have too many riots here this time. The local corporator Rasulbhai came and told us not to have riots. But in 1985 it was terrifying. The Hindu people came and did it. They even burnt our men's scooter-rickshaws. We have Hindus living in the galis behind us, but there is no trouble usually. It's loafers, looters, louts, drinkers who come and do it all,’ she said angrily.
‘But you said the government's hand was behind it.’
‘How else do you explain that everything changes so suddenly?’ She pointed out of the open window. ‘You can see for yourself there are Hindus and Muslims together without any quarrelling, then suddenly all this hatred and fighting starts. The government says it is trying to stop it, but it doesn't. It just sends the police, who give us even more trouble. The only person ever to help us was Latifbhai, and that was in 1985.’
‘Who is he?’
‘The police say he is a big bootlegger, but I don't care about that. All I care is that he was the only person who helped us. All the government help went to the big people. Even SEWA didn't do much for us then. Latif's men went from door to door and took down the names of the helpless Muslims. Then they arranged for us to be given fifty rupees in cash, wheat, rice, oil and dal.’
‘Did Latif help this time?’
‘No, he couldn't. The police have driven him away. They say he is a bad man – that there are cases of all sorts against him. But that means nothing, because the police always make up cases against Muslims, don't they? Personally I don't care how Latif made his money. Why shouldn't he be a thief if all these big leaders are thieves too? At least Latif spent some of his money on poor Muslims.’
By now it was clear that Fatima Bibi was becoming a little irritated by my inquisitiveness, so I decided to leave. As we got up to go, she muttered to herself, ‘Sakun nahin hai. Taklif hai’ – ‘There is no peace, only trouble.’ I wasn't sure whether she was referring to me or to the riots.
Latif was one of those Robin Hoods of the underworld that are so common in India. He had started life as a small-time runner or delivery boy for a bootlegger. Prohibition in Ahmedabad has inevitably spawned an illegal market in liquor. Some of the cheaper varieties are distilled in pots buried in the bed of the dried up Sabarmati river – the sand gets so hot that there is no need for a fire to bring the liquid to the boil. Other cheap varieties are distilled by a once nomadic tribe known as the Charas. They came home to rest in a suburb of Ahmedabad known as
Sardar Nagar, where their activities became so notorious that the government set up a special police station. That police station is now a very popular posting, and a thanedar or station house-officer could well have to pay up to 500,000 rupees to get transferred there, in the certain knowledge that he will recover that sum and much more from the haftas or weekly payments the distillers and bootleggers pay for protection.
Various vessels are used to transport the cheap liquor, including balloons and cycle-tyre inner tubes. The liquor is sold at open-air addas. ‘Adda’ is a word which can mean anything from an airport to a bus or pony-trap stand; in this case it means an illegal bar. The addas also sell samosas and other snacks to help the digestion damp down the fire the crude liquor ignites.
Latif controlled the upmarket business of Indian-made foreign liquor – that's the bureaucratic classification for Indian whisky, gin, rum, vodka and beer. Anyone short of a drink had only to ring Latif's local man and the bottle would be delivered to the door. During the curfew of 1985, Latif used ambulances to ferry booze about the city.
The bootleggers buy protection from the police and provide protection to the politicians. It is their gangs who are used to instigate communal violence. Latif was, of course, always able to tell Muslims that he was not instigating but retaliating. He became so popular with the poorer Muslims that they elected him to be a corporator for five different wards in the Old City. He became so powerful that he could hold even the Indian army at bay.
In 1985, when even the army failed to stem the violence, Rajiv Gandhi sent Julio Ribeiro to Ahmedabad. He had been an outstanding commissioner of police in Bombay, whose gang leaders would have regarded Latif as a novice. Ribeiro asked for a list of all the leading bootleggers and then ordered their arrest. Soon afterwards he called a meeting to discuss progress. Each time a bootlegger's name was mentioned, an officer would say, ‘We can't touch him – he's such and such or so and so politician's man.’ So Ribeiro went and sat in police stations – much to the embarrassment of the local thanedars – and refused to move until the bootleggers living in the neighbourhood were brought before him. Ribeiro himself told me that the trouble died down within a matter of a week or so.
Latif was caught in the Ribeiro net, and that was the beginning of the end for him. It was not, of course, the beginning of the end of bootlegging – that was resumed when Ribeiro moved on to Delhi and then to Punjab. No one quite knows where Latif is nowadays. The courts have banished him from Ahmedabad. According to his lawyer, Mohamed Husen Barejia, he is not allowed within 100 kilometres of the city, but thousands of poor Muslims still cannot believe that the police have got the better of their hero – they still insist that he is in hiding somewhere in the Old City.
Barejia himself had been arrested for fifty days during the 1985 riots, even though he was a leading member of the Congress Party which was in power. He had even been a member of the state assembly for five years. The lawyer lived in the same congested area as Fatima Bibi, and from the outside his residence didn't look much smarter than hers, but when I walked through the doorway I found myself inside a substantial modernized house with an office just below ground level, separated from the hall by a glass partition. The lawyer's daughter sat me down in front of a large desk, and I waited for the statutory five minutes – a man involved in politics always insists on keeping visitors waiting, to demonstrate his importance.
When the lawyer finally made his entrance, he was wearing an immaculate white kurta with pajamas. His thinning white hair was brushed straight back off his forehead. He sat down at his desk and stared at me coldly over the top of his gold-rimmed half-moon spectacles. I thought, ‘This is going to be a difficult conversation to handle.’ But it wasn't. I didn't even have to ask about his client Latif's background – as soon as I mentioned his name, the lawyer said, ‘Latif is definitely a man of the underworld,’ and went on to explain, ‘He has been charged under the National Security Act, the Prevention of Anti Social Activities Act, bootlegging, etc., etc. – whenever any liquor is found on anyone, it can be blamed on him. But he is also a symbol of the Muslims' sensitivity. They feel he is being persecuted because he is a Muslim. Bootleggers like him have lakhs of rupees to give to people and earn public goodwill. That was why he became so popular. But I must tell you he is fighting all his cases, and he has been released on many of them already.’
‘Was it because you were Latif's lawyer that you were arrested too?’ I asked.
Oh no. That was quite a different story. I was arrested during the '85 riots along with three other Congress Muslim leaders. No Hindus were arrested. It was done to show the majority community – the Hindus – that the government and the administration were with them. That sort of thinking – that groupism – is the root cause of the Congress Party's downfall.’
One of the lawyer's clerks came through the open door in the glass screen which separated the office from the hall. He stood nervously beside Barejia. I could see a client waiting outside. Barejia turned to the clerk and said with obvious irritation, ‘What do you want? Can't you see I'm having an important meeting?’
The clerk replied, ‘Yes, Sahib. But that man who came to see you about the murder case – he's outside and he says he has a “date” now.’
‘Well, tell him I got him put on bail last time and I'll get him out again this time. Take his court summons for the date and tell him to come to my office tomorrow.’ Then, dismissing his clerk with an imperious wave, Barejia returned to the subject of his party – the Congress.
‘Let me tell you another story about what happened during those riots, which is even more shocking’ he said. ‘It was Id – the day the Ramzan fast ends – like Christmas to you. There was curfew and we had been told to warn Muslims that they couldn't come out to the mosques to say their prayers. All right – we accepted that. Then we learnt that the police were going to allow a Hindu religious procession to come right through our area. I phoned the chief minister. He told me that he had not given permission for the procession, but then went on to ask me to make sure the procession passed through peacefully. I said, “That's not fair. Ask the police, ask the army to do that, but don't ask me.”’
It is possible that the decision to allow the Hindu procession to continue was not political. Film shot by the security forces showed the procession accompanying the chariot of Lord Jagganath moving forward appropriately enough like an unstoppable juggernaut, with temple elephants contemptuously sweeping army jeeps aside. If the army or the police had tried to stop it, there would have been great bloodshed. But at the same time, the army must have realized there would be violence if the procession went through Barejia's predominantly Muslim area, and violence there was. At least seven Muslims lost their lives. Barejia organized a demonstration by 20,000 women to protest against the shooting of the Muslims.
As Barejia was so clearly dissatisfied with the Congress Party's attitude towards the Muslims, I asked him why he was still a Congressman. He replied, ‘The Congress may be bad, but the main opposition in Gujarat is the BJP and they are far worse. They believe Muslims are a burden on India and should be driven out. Actually, you know, there need be no communalism in India if it wasn't for the power-brokers. The power-brokers turn Hindus and Muslims against each other, so that they will become vote-banks. If you arouse communal feelings, you can call on Hindus to vote as Hindus.’
Much of the trouble in Gujarat this time might have been averted if there had not been so much power-broking going on. On 13 March, more than three weeks before the stabbing started in Ahmedabad, Muslims in the Gujarati town of Patan sent identical telegrams to the prime minister, the chief minister of Gujarat, the inspector general of police, the district collector and the deputy collector. The telegrams read, ‘Stabbing of Muslims continuing. No control. Property burnt. Muslims' life in danger. Request immediate interference. Matter most urgent.’ That should have warned the politicians that there was a danger of tension and violence spreading to Ahmedabad, but their minds were on
other things – the elections to the Rajya Sabha or upper house of parliament in Delhi.
Elections to the upper house of parliament are held every two years, with one third of the house resigning each time. That means that a member is guaranteed a seat for at least six years, whatever the political fortunes of his party during that period. The upper house is known as the Rajya Sabha or Council of States, and it has powers to delay legislation passed in the lower house. These powers are intended to guarantee the federal nature of the Indian constitution. Each state has a certain number of seats in the Rajya Sabha, and the members of the state assembly form the electoral college for those seats. A common phenomenon in an election is what is known as cross-voting, or a member of the state assembly not voting for his party's candidate. Cross-voting can lead to splits in parties and political crises, especially when a government has a narrow majority.
The position in Gujarat this time was particularly crucial. In the recent assembly elections, the Janata Dal had won only three more seats than its coalition partner the Bharatiya Janata Party. Any evidence of erosion of support for the Janata Dal in the Rajya Sabha elections could lead to the Bharatiya Janata Party claiming the chief-ministership. The Congress Party, of course, was very anxious to do all it could to discredit the Janata Dal and take revenge for its defeat in the recent elections. Set-backs to the Janata Dal in the Rajya Sabha elections could also have affected the stability of its minority government in Delhi. Although the Congress Party now lacked the required number of members of the assembly to win even one of the Rajya Sabha seats on its own, it believed it could defeat one of the coalition's candidates with the support of independents.
In March 1990, the verandahs and waiting-rooms of the leaders’ houses were crowded with politicians, brokers, operators, middlemen and all their retainers too. Everyone who was anyone had to be seen to be in on an act as important as this. There was not a coloured shirt to be seen: everyone wore white, homespun cotton kurtas – the uniform of a politician – and some sported Gandhi caps, which have gone out of fashion even among politicians in most other parts of India. Unfortunately I was not in Ahmedabad for this political drama, but I was given a full report by one of the main actors – Raoof Valiullah, a retiring member of the Rajya Sabha who the previous government had appointed chairman of the Gujarat Minorities Board.
