Memories of December 6th

Islamic terrorism. What has it got to do with India and with Uttar Pradesh? Everything! Carcasses may float in the holy Ganges, pigeon shit may dot the Imambaras, and arms may be available in the local market. This has been happening for years. But they can now trace it all to Islamic terrorism. The ghost of December 6 has been covered with the shroud of September 11.

I know someone who has suffered through the Nazi Holocaust. She lives in India and from her persistent enquiries about my well-being during those post-demolition days, I could gauge that our riots were only reopening old wounds for her. Can we really quantify pain and see any qualitative difference in tears?

Did Lord Rama want the mosque to be brought down? Do 800 million Indians want a theocracy with the license to carry trishuls? Is this a backhanded compliment to Western gun culture, or is it indigenous boredom projecting itself as righteous anger?

India has been marketed for its non-violence, yet its epics are centred on wars. Our concept of hospitality often results in emotional battering. This may not qualify as violence but in my encounters with foreigners in the recent past, I have discerned a certain disillusionment. When I chanced upon a book, ‘The Black Pages’ by George Berglund, I identified with it completely.

Here was a former American officer who controlled the nuclear weapons for a NATO unit, his stint having “convinced me that the world was insane”. Instead, he was taken to a mental asylum to be treated for being “paranoid schizophrenic”. He would understand all about scars.

So, he landed in a city strewn with ashes and felt like a tourist “who had stumbled upon some ghastly truth”, which made him feel it was “a mythical encounter between the third eye of the western tourist with the third eye of Lord Shiva”. Of course, he was told to stay in his room. Perhaps he would get to see smoke billowing outside his window. If he were one of us, he’d fret – for life, limb, and sanity.

But he wasn’t and he realised it outside the Gateway of India where he told the tourist guide that he was planning to write about the riots. Prompt came the reply that writing was like crapping in the wind; one had to act. And immediate action for that poor guide was to try and get home.

For an Indian those days following December 6, 1992, the worry was: would the man find his home in one piece? Depending on the situation we would blame each other as we still do. But for Berglund it became a larger question, “Can we distinguish a riot from a pogrom, a pogrom from a holy war, and that from a holocaust?”

Berglund’s description of the lumpens is interesting. “Their violence keeps them entirely social, for it’s a counter-violence they practise as an avenue to group identity, a process of the bonding of the dispossessed. Their use of violence is another way to lay claim to socially produced wealth. The riots thus constitute the decriminalization of crime.” In fact he saw Thackerays’ assertion, “the third eye is now opening”, as evidence that riots in India constitute a continuation of politics by other means. His understanding seems to blow away all the cobwebs that we have so diligently built over the years when he says, “Ethnic hatred is the most natural of human desires.” I found this valid when a BBC reporter hesitantly asked me, “Would you still wear a bindi after all this?”

While we have got trapped in various versions of secularism, the foreigner has been able to peel away masks, even if unintentionally, wanting to delve deep into how “collective madness protects the lost collective self”. Though calling it madness means escaping responsibility.

Ruchika, a researcher from New York, sat with me for four hours one afternoon trying to get to the root of what she thought was an urban phenomenon. “Not Bombay,” she shook her head in dismay. “I just cannot imagine this city going haywire. Here you are spending so much time with me. In NY, I’d get a coffee, a few words and goodbye. Bombay has a heart.”

But Berglund was firm. “I just don’t believe that violence was new to the city” because “democracy is no rival for the sacred forces of violence”. The Bombay we salaamed after the blasts for getting back on its feet was doing so to get greater bargaining power. It was back in business, its martyrdom full of aggressiveness.

Which is why Berglund could not understand the group of film stars on a hunger strike. “Sunil Dutt claimed that a fast was a sort of self-punishment, and he disagreed wholeheartedly when I interpreted it as violence against one’s body and person.” He feels that the Western image of a karmic India is one of imagination. “On my first visit as a tourist, I had the impression that Indians act as if they are a brief but major statement to existence, and the rest of us had better put up with it since there is no understanding that statement.”

It is by no means a gushing comment, but it is the outsider who poses the pertinent query, “Is violence always a dead-end, or does violence generate social alternatives?”

As an Indian who has lived through what I see as the second partition (of minds and born-again Muslims and Hindus), I feel that each alternative becomes a dead-end. We may romanticise the motives, cull history out of a mortar shell, or break our heads over bricks, but when we hit, someone does get hurt. You can take either side and call it madness or sanity, but blood does stain the fence.



\* \* \* \* \*

I refuse to believe that during these elections there will be other issues. There cannot be. Ayodhya shall forever haunt us. Ashok Singhal of the VHP has categorically stated, “We have sacrificed four governments for the sake of the temple and we’ll sacrifice a fifth if we have to.”

Compare this with the words of Allan Fakir, a Sufi singer, who on a visit last year to Delhi from Sindh said, “Yes, Babar must have come to Ayodhya, he must have stumbled on a ruined structure and asked what it was. He must have been told that it is the birthplace of Ram and Lakshman – ‘then it is pavitra bhoomi. There should be ibaadat in such a place. Prayers and devotion. Raise a mosque here’. And thus a Babri Masjid must have come to be.”

The saffron brigade is running out of ideas. They are so devoid of leadership qualities that they will tag on to any opportunity. They find a messiah in V.S.Naipaul, who they may have not even read, or a Muslim writer like Tasleema Nasreen, who they should spare themselves from reading. Today they are equating the creation of Lord Rama’s birthplace with the American version of a “kless auph seeveelaizaisun”. At the WTC site pictures of the dead are displayed, as of the ones missing. Those who carried out the attacks are called terrorists. They are not handed over the reins of power, as the kesariyas have been. They have absolutely no confidence in their philosophy, so they feel the need to reassert it.

They pointedly ask about the Muslim identity crisis, “Isn’t there going to be an end to it?” Sure, if after 8000 years the majority of the populace can stop worrying about stray mosques and bearded gentlemen and of being overtaken by 14 per cent of the population, then the minority too can stop being bothered about its identity. Unlike the saffron lot that gathers around oases, I can feel the hot desert sands underfoot. Yet I choose to walk. And feel the heat.



I flip through the pages of something I had written in 1992. One week after everything came crumbling down. I read the letters that I received after that. Letters filled with tears. I have often talked about hate mail, but these were notes written by people who cared…I can only reproduce my words. Perhaps in them lies the genesis of what I am today. Or maybe not…

\* \* \* \* \*

Come on brother, they said, drop your pants. Let me see who you are – Hindu or Muslim. Accordingly, I shall like you. It does not matter whether I hate your face or the lice in your hair, the glint in your eyes and the biases in your mind. That one thing shall decide your fate.

But what will decide mine, a woman’s?

Today they are insane and I non-existent. They do funny things when mad. They smash tubelights in faces and carry pickaxes in the streets. They get only nightmares, that is, when they manage to sleep. And in sleep they look so innocent, their knees pulled up to the tummies like it was in their mother’s womb, swimming in amino fluids, sponging on her blood.

Today they are thirsty for more blood, brother. No, they haven’t raped my sister or smashed my friend’s skull. They have desecrated a place of worship. In less than six hours they did it. So much energy they have. Can you imagine if they put it to use to build something, how much they would manage to achieve?

Then my Hindu friend wouldn’t have to hang his head in shame. He called to say, “I’m sorry.” And instead of saying that it did not matter, do you know how I responded? I said, “Yes, of course.” What do you think got into me, brother? I am not a religious person, but when I heard the news there was a lump in my throat, and I did cry.

Then they frightened me. They talked about a possible war and a diaspora. I seriously thought of keeping a bag ready. But where would I go? Brother, I have sat with you and watched the fireflies dance in the moonlight and we joked about our respective customs because we could laugh at ourselves.

Now, we have lost our sense of humour, and with it our claims to being a civilised society. I am sad not because it was a mosque that went, but because we are regressing, bending, and slowly we will be down on all fours, striking the flint to get a fire. In some ways that will be good: To become the lowest common denominator, for then we shall not have to rationalise our behaviour.



So let us go then, you and I, and watch as our houses become specks of dust and our souls turn to scar tissue. Let us go and make our visit to the loo.

But when you show me who you are, don’t forget to hide your face and wipe out your memories, for in them are lodged our shared dreams. I will recognise you but only so much and no more. I will try to forget our discussions about Hegel and Homer and the fights over my flaws and yours.

I will not utter a word about my strongly-felt belief that it is not the business of the government to construct a place of worship, and if it is gone then nothing can be done about it, and the faith should be large enough to withstand a physical assault. I promise I will try to keep my mouth shut.

But, should I? You may be one person or a hundred. Why don’t I just gather you in my arms and wipe your tears and have you wipe mine, and we munch peanuts and watch the sunset as the sky turns a pink of salami, which I am prohibited from eating and you can and do when I am around, and I don’t mind. Because you are you and I am I, and that is what we love about each another? So buckle up.

And forget about the insanity. Don’t worry about that condom filled with pebbles. It carries no life within it. If at all any seeds are sown, then be sure they will one day pick up only weeds. Brother, you and I deserve much more.