Riot

by Shashi Tharoor

  “ ‘The case for the HELP-US population-control awareness projects is founded on the clear and demonstrable relationship between high fertility rates and the subjugation of women. This is particularly apparent in India, where women are placed under considerable social and family pressure to bear more children, which in turn reduces their autonomy as decisional agents in society. The fact is that women who are largely confined to, and in a real sense shackled by, the repeated bearing and full-time raising of children suffer a loss of freedom and agency that restricts their abilities to fulfil their life potential. Young women must be a particular target of HELP-US because raising their consciousness can have a much wider impact on their families and on society as a whole. Women who resist repeated childbearing will exercise greater authority within their family units which, in turn, will reduce fertility rates and thus reduce the strain on the limited economic and environmental resources of a developing country like India…

  “You see, Mrs. Hart? What a vision your daughter was having? What a vision!”

  Ram Charan Gupta to Randy Diggs

  (translated from Hindi)

  October 12, 1989

  You look at me politely enough, but I can see you are not convinced. You have doubtless been reading the opinions of these so-called secularists in Delhi who say there is no proof that the Ram Janmabhoomi temple stood where the so-called Babri Masjid now stands. What do they know about proof who only know what Western textbooks have taught them? It has been known for thousands of years that that is the Ram Janmasthan, the exact place of birth of our Lord Ram. Knowledge passed down from generation to generation by word of mouth is how wisdom was transmitted in India, Mr. Diggs. Ours is an oral tradition, and our tradition tells us that this is where Ram was born. In any case, does it not strike you as strange that Ayodhya is full of temples, but the most coveted spot, the most hallowed spot, the spot with the best site on a hill, is occupied by a mosque? Do these secularists think that was an accident, or a simple coincidence? Or might it be, instead, that Babar, the Mughal invader, demolished the biggest, the best, the most important temple of the Hindus and replaced it with a mosque named for himself, just to rub the noses of the conquered in the rubble of their faith?

  This is not just supposition, Mr. Diggs. There is plenty of historical evidence for our claims. Joseph Tiffenthaler, an Austrian Jesuit priest who stayed in Awadh between 1776 and 1781, wrote about how the famous temple marking the birth of Ram had been destroyed 250 years earlier and a mosque built with its stones. A British court even pronounced judgment in 1886, and I quote: “It is most unfortunate that a masjid should have been built on land specially held sacred by the Hindus.… But as the event occurred 356 years ago it is too late now to remedy the grievance. All that can be done is to maintain the status quo.… Any innovation could cause more harm and derangement of order than benefit.” What does that mean, I ask you, Mr. Diggs? Does it not imply that the British acknowledged that a mosque had been built on the site of the temple, but they felt they could do nothing about it because they did not want to risk a law-and-order problem?

  I have no doubt where the truth lies. What is more important, Mr. Diggs, is that millions of devout Hindus have no doubt either. To them this accursed mosque occupies the most sacred site in Hinduism, our Ram Janmabhoomi. Who cares what proof these leftist historians demand when so many believe they know the truth? Our faith is the only proof we need. What kind of Indian would support a structure named for a foreigner, Babar, over one consecrated to the greatest Indian of them all, that divinity in human form, Lord Rama?

  And the Ram Janmabhoomi is not the only temple that was demolished by these marauding invaders and replaced with their filthy mosques. There are literally dozens more, all over our country. Do you know the story of the Kashi Vishwanath temple — or, as they prefer to call it, the Gyan Vapi mosque? No? Then listen: I will tell you.

  It was just over three hundred years ago. The Kashi Vishwanath temple was one of the finest in Varanasi — what you call Benares, the city of temples, on the banks of the holy Ganga, the Ganges. It had been built as the result of a particularly auspicious dream — a dream by a princess, in which she was urged to consecrate this spot to Shiva, the god of destruction in our holy trinity. Inside the famed temple, which attracted millions of devotees from far and near, stood a magnificent shivalingam made of the purest emerald, a glittering phallic representation of the power of the godhead. Aurangzeb, the evil Muslim fanatic who reigned on the Mughal throne in Delhi, whose hatred for what he called idolatry was notorious, lusted for this prize. In 1669 he sent down one of his most feared generals with orders to smash the great temple, where he claimed “wicked sciences” were being practiced, and to bring the emerald lingam back to him.

  The general he chose was an Abyssinian in his service who was known as Black Mountain. The name was apt in more ways than one. Black Mountain was a terrifying figure, immensely tall and broad-shouldered, black as the night, clad entirely in black, who always rode a black stallion. He marched on Varanasi with thousands of troops and something the defenders of the city had not faced before — dozens of cannons. And yet, despite this terrible adversary, how the Hindus of Varanasi fought! What a fearsome battle raged, Mr. Diggs! The Hindus defended their temple against impossible odds. Hundreds of Hindu soldiers and civilians were killed, but they could not indefinitely resist the overwhelming might of the invaders.

  With defeat inevitable and the might of the Mughals about to descend on the temple, its purohit, the chief priest, made the supreme sacrifice. He seized the emerald lingam — which must have weighed much more than the priest himself— and dragged himself over to the temple well, known as the Well of Knowledge. There, with the forces of General Black Mountain almost upon him, the priest plunged into the waters of the well, clutching the lingam to his heart. Of course the weight of the precious object took him to the bottom, guaranteeing his death. His drowned body soon floated to the top, and was pulled out by Black Mountain’s men. But of the prized emerald itself there was no sign. A furious Black Mountain had the well dredged, but the lingam was never found. The Muslims said it must have slipped into an estuary and floated into the Ganges. But we Hindus know it was recovered by Shiva himself, taken out of the clutches of the invaders, who smashed his temple in their rage. It will return to Varanasi one day — but only when the vile mosque they have built in place of the fabled temple is replaced by a Shiva temple once again, and the princess’s original dream is once again fulfilled.

  So you did not know about the Kashi Vishwanath, eh, Mr. Diggs? This time you will not hear those secularists cleverly decrying the lack of proof that there was ever a temple at that spot. For the proof is visible on the walls of the mosque itself — the back wall of the mosque is the wall of the ruined temple, complete with traces of its original Hindu carvings. You want more proof? In 1937, the British themselves examined the facts and concluded — officially, with a formal report — that the Gyan Vapi mosque stands upon the site of an ancient Hindu temple. Why should it have been any different with the Ram Janmabhoomi? You see, Mr. Diggs, it was very simple. Hindu temples were destroyed and replaced by mosques quite deliberately, as part of a conscious imperial strategy by the Muslim rulers to demoralize the local population and humiliate them. It was a way of saying, your Hindu gods are not so powerful, they had to bow before Muslim might, just as you too must subjugate yourselves to your new Mughal masters. That was the message of the Gyan Vapi mosque, and that was the message of the so-called Babri Masjid.

  Now tell me, Mr. Diggs, is that a message that has any place in today’s free and independent India? Is it not time to restore the pride of the local people in their own traditions, their own gods, their own worth, by rebuilding the Ram Janmabhoomi temple?

  These fancy-pants administrators you are going to meet, Lakshman and Gurinder Singh, want us to call off our agitation because of the riot. Call it off? We will never do that, Mr. Diggs. Never! Because if we do, the Muslims will pr
oclaim victory. They will think they have won, they will crow about our humiliation, and then, believe me, they will come and slaughter us in our beds.

  There is the old story of the trooper standing guard with two drawn swords, one in each hand. An enemy soldier comes to him and slaps him across the face. The trooper does nothing and the enemy sneeringly walks away. “Why didn’t you react when he slapped you?” asks a bystander. “But how could I?” replies the trooper. “Both my hands were occupied.”

  That trooper, Mr. Diggs, is Hindu India. We have the swords in our hands but we do not use them even when we are repeatedly slapped. Well, those days are over. We know how to fight back now, with what is in our hands.

  Guru Golwalkar, the longest serving Hindu leader this century said it very clearly, years ago: “The non-Hindu people in Hindustan must adopt the Hindu culture and language, must learn to respect and hold in reverence Hindu religion, must entertain no ideas but those of the glorification of the Hindu race and culture, i.e., they must not only give up their attitude of intolerance and ungratefulness towards this land and its age-old tradition but must also cultivate the positive attitude of love and devotion instead — in a word, they must cease to be foreigners, or may stay in the country wholly subordinate to the Hindu nation, claiming, deserving no privileges, much less any preferential treatment — not even citizen’s rights.” That is the message to these evil Muslims. As you say in your country, they better believe it.

  No, the Ram Janmabhoomi temple will be built. No matter how many lives have to be sacrificed to ensure it. Our blood will irrigate the dusty soil, our sweat will mix the cement instead of water, but we will build the temple, Mr. Diggs. Mark my words. I have seen the light in the eyes of the young boys in our procession, even the very ones who were stabbed. It is not just religious fervor that makes their eyes shine, Mr. Diggs. It is the look of victory — as if some spark that has been stamped on for forty years has suddenly blazed again. This light will not be easily put out. It will shine, yes, and it will illuminate the whole of India with its flame.

  from Randy Diggs’s notebook

  October 14, 1989

  Gurinder Singh: tough cop. Turban, fierce beard, Sikh. Smart. Honest? Talks straight. Curses (a lot). Drinks (a lot). “I’m Sikh enough not to smoke and Punjabi enough to drink like an Ambassador. I don’t mean the diplomatic piss-artist: I mean I guzzle like that steel behemoth of an Ambassador car we make here.”

  GS and Lakshman make an odd pair at the helm of the district, but to all appearances a good one. They’re old buddies, sort of. This from an interview, unprintables deleted: “We weren’t exactly close friends in college. You can see the differences. Lucky’s an intellectual type with a sensitive soul. I’m down-to-earth, a man of action. He reads books in his spare time; I run. At college he studied English; I did history. He debated and edited the campus rag; I played [field] hockey. He’s vegetarian; I bunked [skipped] the mess hall the one day of the week they didn’t serve meat. He’s a teetotaler; I always had a bottle of rum under my bed. But I liked the fellow for two reasons: he’s smart and he’s honest. So when he ran for president of the College Union against one of my hockey teammates, a fellow with as much wood between his ears as in his hands on the field, I supported Lucky. Made me a bit unpopular with the rest of the hockey team. But he was the better candidate, and the better man. I’m glad to be working with him in bloody Zalilgarh.”

  The pair seem to have made the same sets of enemies. Which suggests they must work well together.

  from transcript of Randy Diggs interview

  with Superintendent of Police Gurinder Singh

  October 14, 1989

  RD: So you and the district magistrate couldn’t stop the procession from going ahead even after the stabbing incident that night?

  GS: You’re right. We did our damnedest, you know. Of course, the bloody perpetrators were absconding. But I spent the night arresting every Muslim troublemaker I could think of. If you owned a motorcycle and didn’t own a foreskin, I locked you up. Then Lucky and I–

  RD: Lucky?

  GS: Lakshman. Sorry. I call him Lucky. A college nickname. He calls me Guru. Except when he’s issuing orders. Anyway, Lucky and I called in the Hindu leaders at dawn. Buggers came in rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Only made them look more bloodshot and murderous, the bastards. Told them we’d made the arrests, pleaded for calm, asked them to forget their little procession. You’d have thought we’d asked them to sell us their daughters. One of them, a fat little runt called Sharma, got so hysterical I thought his eyes would pop right out of his fucking head. No, they were determined to go ahead.

  RD: And you couldn’t stop them?

  GS: Not really. Actually, Lucky had already asked for permission to ban the procession. Well before the bloody stabbing. But he’d been denied by Lucknow. So, without an okay from the state government, that really wasn’t an option. In any case, there were already some twenty-five to thirty thousand Hindutva volunteers assembled in Zalilgarh. Buggers were determined and as charged up as the batteries on their megaphones. Lucky and I realized that if we attempted to halt the procession by force at this stage we were doomed to fail. It was a pissing certainty that police action would lead only to large-scale violence and killings. Don’t forget that at that point I was also outnumbered – I had a few hundred cops to their thirty thousand motherloving zealots. So we tried persuasion.

  RD: And it didn’t work.

  GS: You’re right – it didn’t work. They were as stubborn a bunch of bastards as ever smeared ash on their foreheads. Want a refill on that drink?

  RD: No, thanks. But you go ahead. So you gave up?

  GS: No, dammit, we didn’t give up. What the hell do you think we are, a bunch of pansies? We tried to get them to change their route, to avoid Muslim areas and in particular mosques. They wouldn’t agree to that either. Finally Lucky and I felt we had no choice. Our only option seemed to be to let the procession pass – but with intensive control and regulation.

  RD: Meaning what exactly?

  GS: Bloody soda’s flatter than a hijra’s chest. This is like drinking dog’s piss, if you ask me.Jaswinder! Soda hai? Anyway – sorry, what was it? Something else you asked me.

  RD: What did your “intensive control and regulation” mean?

  GS: Standard stuff, man. We imposed pretty stiff conditions on them. Oh, Lucky was stern and uncompromising that morning. The buggers could march, but they had to forget about beating drums or cymbals near the mosques. They wanted to carry stuff, fine – but they could carry placards, not weapons. None of this brandishing of swords and trishuls – you know, Shiva’s trident, which so many of these saffron-robed monks love to wave about the pissing place. And none of their anti-Muslim slogans of hate, calculated to insult the other motherlovers into rash retaliation.

  RD: What sort of slogans?

  GS: Pretty rabid ones. In fact, there had been a couple of weeks of sustained, offensive sloganeering before the stabbing incident, so we knew how words could inflame passions. Every day as the bastards prepared for their march, hundreds of young Hindu men would gather in the Muslim parts of town and shout slogans, abusing Muslims, taunting them, goading them. Sometimes they’d roar into the mohallas on motorbikes, revving their engines before shouting their provocations. “Mussalmaan ke do hi sthaan / Pakistan ya kabristan” – “There are only two places for a Muslim, Pakistan or the cemetery.” It got worse: “Jo kahta hai Ali Ali / Uski ma ko choddo gali gali” – “He who calls out to Ali, fuck his mother in every alley.” Of course the bastards did this during the day, when most of the Muslim men were away at work and the women and kids were cowering in their homes. Some of their slogans were aimed at bolstering the courage of the waverers among the Hindus. “Jis Hindu ka khoon na khaule / Khoon nahin hai pani hai” – “The Hindu whose blood doesn’t boil has water in his veins.” Or “Jo Janmabhoomi ke kaam na aaye / Woh bekaar jawaani hai” – “He who does not work for the Janmabhoomi is a useless yo
uth.” And of course the usual affirmations that “Mandir wahin banayenge” – “The temple will be built right there.” That is, where the mosque stands. It may not sound like much, but when you hear these words in the throats of a hundred lusty young men on noisy motorbikes, revving their rage between shouts, you understand how maddened with fear the Muslims became. Whichever pissing Englishman wrote “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me” had never been within sniffing distance of a slogan-shouting Indian mob. Words can hurt you, my friend. These words did. I have no doubt they led directly to the stabbing incident the night before the procession.

  RD: So Mr. Lakshman tried to ban the sloganeering?

  GS: Along with all the other things I mentioned. Agree to the conditions, he said, or no march; my good friend the stern cop here will withdraw police permission for your procession. And I nodded, giving my sinister smile. It was a bluff, but they couldn’t take the chance that it mightn’t be. So they agreed. And then Lucky pulled out a sheet of paper and a pen and asked the leaders of all the main Hindu parties to give us these commitments in writing. Bugger-all good that did, as it turned out.

  RD: So they didn’t keep their promises?

  GS: Lucky seemed to think it would make a difference if they signed something. But frankly, I never thought it would amount to a pisspot full of spit. Someone who doesn’t intend to keep an oral promise doesn’t suddenly become more trustworthy because he puts it in writing. Their signatures weren’t worth a rat’s fart on a cold day, if you’ll pardon my Punjabi. So I planned an extensive police presence anyway. Throughout the route of the bleeding march – cops at every corner and crossing, more in front of the mosques and sensitive neighborhoods, plus pickets of the Provincial Armed Constabulary, called in from neighboring districts where they’d been dealing with the same sort of crap. We really did everything we fucking could, Mr. Diggs. But it wasn’t enough.