Riot

by Shashi Tharoor

  staining our hearts with light.

  Lakshman to Priscilla

  July 1, 1989

  Isn’t it lovely here? I could sit with you and look across the river at the sky as the sun sets completely, feel the darkness settle on our shoulders like a cloak, and forget everything, especially the hatreds that are slowly being stoked in the town even as we speak. It almost moves me to prayer.

  Why do I pray? And how? And to whom? So many questions! Well, I’m a Hindu — I was born one, and I’ve never been attracted to any other faith. I’ll tell you why in a minute. How do I pray? Not in any organized form, really; I go to temples sometimes with my family, but they leave me cold. I think of prayer as something intensely personal, a way of reaching my hands out towards my maker. I recite some mantras my parents taught me as a child; there is something reassuring about those ancient words, hallowed by use and repetition over thousands of years. Sacred Sanskrit, a language alive only in heaven and kept from dying here on earth so that we can be understood when we address the gods. But I often supplement the mantras with incantations of my own in Tamil or English, asking for certain kinds of guidance or protection for myself or those I love. These days I mention you a lot in my prayers.

  Yes, I pray to Hindu gods. It’s not that I believe that there is, somewhere in heaven, a god that looks like a Bombay calendar artists image of him. It’s simply that prayer is a way of acknowledging a divinity beyond human experience; and since no human has had direct sight of God, all visual representations of the divine are merely crutches, helping flawed and limited human beings to imagine the unimaginable. Why not a corpulent elephant-headed god with a broken tusk? Why is that image any less real or inspiring of devotion than a suffering man on a cross? So yes, I pray to Ganapathi, and to Vishnu and Shiva, and to my memory of a faded calendar portrait of Rama and Sita in my parents’ prayer room. These are just ways of imagining God, and I pray in order to touch those forces and sources of life that go beyond the human. Human beings, to me, are rather like electrical appliances that need to be charged regularly, and prayer is a way of plugging into that charge.

  So I’m not embarrassed to say I’m a believing Hindu. But I don’t have anything in common with these so-called Hindu fundamentalists. Actually, it’s a bit odd to speak of “Hindu fundamentalism,” because Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals: no organized church, no compulsory beliefs or rites of worship, no single sacred book. The name itself denotes something less, and more, than a set of theological beliefs. In many languages — French and Persian amongst them — the word for “Indian” is “Hindu.” Originally “Hindu” simply meant the people beyond the river Sindhu, or Indus. But the Indus is now in Islamic Pakistan; and to make matters worse, the word “Hindu” did not exist in any Indian language till its use by foreigners gave Indians a term for self-definition.

  My wife’s in the Shiva temple right now, praying. In all the chants she’s hearing, the word “Hindu” will not be uttered. In fact, Priscilla, “Hinduism” is the name others applied to the indigenous religion of India, which many Hindus simply call Sanatan Dharma, the eternal faith. It embraces an eclectic range of doctrines and practices, from pantheism to agnosticism and from faith in reincarnation to belief in the caste system. But none of these constitutes an obligatory credo for a Hindu: there are none.

  You know, I grew up in a Hindu household. Our home (and my father moved a dozen times in his working life) always had a prayer alcove, where paintings and portraits of assorted divinities jostled for shelf and wall space with fading photographs of departed ancestors, all stained by ash scattered from the incense burned daily by my devout parents. Every morning, after his bath, my father would stand in front of the prayer alcove wrapped in his towel, his wet hair still uncombed, and chant his Sanskrit mantras. But he never obliged me to join him; he exemplified the Hindu idea that religion is an intensely personal matter, that prayer is between you and whatever image of your maker you choose to worship. In the Hindu way, I was to find my own truth.

  Like most Hindus, I think I have. I am, as I told you, a believer, despite a brief period of schoolboy atheism — of the kind that comes with the discovery of rationality and goes with an acknowledgement of its limitations. And, I suppose, with the realization that the world offers too many wondrous mysteries for which science has no answers. And I am happy to describe myself as a believing Hindu, not just because it is the faith into which I was born, but for a string of other reasons, though faith requires no reason. One is cultural: as a Hindu I belong to a faith that expresses the ancient genius of my own people. Another is, for lack of a better phrase, its intellectual “fit”: I am more comfortable with the belief structures of Hinduism than I would be with those of the other faiths of which I know. As a Hindu I claim adherence to a religion without an established church or priestly papacy, a religion whose rituals and customs I am free to reject, a religion that does not oblige me to demonstrate my faith by any visible sign, by subsuming my identity in any collectivity, not even by a specific day or time or frequency of worship. There’s no Hindu pope, Priscilla, no Hindu Sunday. As a Hindu I subscribe to a creed that is free of the restrictive dogmas of holy writ, that refuses to be shackled to the limitations of a single holy book.

  Above all, as a Hindu I belong to the only major religion in the world that does not claim to be the only true religion. I find it immensely congenial to be able to face my fellow human beings of other faiths without being burdened by the conviction that I am embarked upon a “true path” that they have missed. This dogma lies at the core of religions like Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Take your faith: “I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no man cometh unto the Father, but by me,” says the Bible. Book of John, right? chapter 14, verse 6; look it up, I did. Or Islam: “There is no God but Allah and Mohammed is his Prophet,” declares the Koran — denying unbelievers all possibility of redemption, let alone of salvation or paradise. Hinduism, however, asserts that all ways of belief are equally valid, and Hindus readily venerate the saints, and the sacred objects, of other faiths. There is no such thing as a Hindu heresy.

  How can such a religion lend itself to “fundamentalism”? That devotees of this essentially tolerant faith want to desecrate a shrine, that they’re going around assaulting Muslims in its name, is to me a source of shame and sorrow. India has survived the Aryans, the Mughals, the British; it has taken from each — language, art, food, learning — and grown with all of them. To be Indian is to be part of an elusive dream we all share, a dream that fills our minds with sounds, words, flavors from many sources that we cannot easily identify. Muslim invaders may indeed have destroyed Hindu temples, putting mosques in their place, but this did not — could not — destroy the Indian dream. Nor did Hinduism suffer a fatal blow. Large, eclectic, agglomerative, the Hinduism that I know understands that faith is a matter of hearts and minds, not of bricks and stone. “Build Ram in your heart,” the Hindu is enjoined; and if Ram is in your heart, it will matter little where else he is, or is not.

  Why should today’s Muslims have to pay a price for what Muslims may have done four hundred and fifty years ago? It’s just politics, Priscilla. The twentieth-century politics of deprivation has eroded the culture’s confidence. Hindu chauvinism has emerged from the competition for resources in a contentious democracy. Politicians of all faiths across India seek to mobilize voters by appealing to narrow identities. By seeking votes in the name of religion, caste, and region, they have urged voters to define themselves on these lines. Indians have been made more conscious than ever before of what divides us.

  And so these fanatics in Zalilgarh want to tear down the Babri Masjid and construct a Ram Janmabhoomi temple in its place. I am not amongst the Indian secularists who oppose agitation because they reject the historical basis of the claim that the mosque stood on the site of Rama’s birth. They may be right, they may be wrong, but to me what matters is what most people believe, for their beliefs offer a sounder basis for public p
olicy than the historians’ footnotes. And it would work better. Instead of saying to impassioned Hindus, “You are wrong, there is no proof this was Ram’s birthplace, there is no proof that the temple Babar demolished to build this mosque was a temple to Ram, go away and leave the mosque in place,” how much more effective might it have been to say, “You may be right, let us assume for a moment that there was a Ram Janmabhoomi temple here that was destroyed to make room for this mosque four hundred and sixty years ago, does that mean we should behave in that way today? If the Muslims of the 1520s acted out of ignorance and fanaticism, should Hindus act the same way in the 1980s? By doing what you propose to do, you will hurt the feelings of the Muslims of today, who did not perpetrate the injustices of the past and who are in no position to inflict injustice upon you today; you will provoke violence and rage against your own kind; you will tarnish the name of the Hindu people across the world; and you will irreparably damage your own cause. Is this worth it?”

  That’s what I’ve been trying to say to people like Ram Charan Gupta and Bhushan Sharma and their bigoted ilk. But they don’t listen. They look at me as if I’m sort of a deracinated alien being who can’t understand how normal people think. Look, I understand Hindus who see a double standard at work here. Muslims say they are proud to be Muslim, Sikhs say they are proud to be Sikh, Christians say they are proud to be Christian, and Hindus say they are proud to be … secular. It is easy to see why this sequence should provoke the scorn of those Hindus who declaim, “Garv se kahon hum Hindu hain” — “Say with pride that we are Hindus.” Gupta and Sharma never fail to spit that slogan at me. And I am proud of my Hinduism. But in what precisely am I, as a Hindu, to take pride? Hinduism is no monolith; its strength is found within each Hindu, not in the collectivity. As a Hindu, I take no pride in wanting to destroy other people’s symbols, in hitting others on the head because of the cut of their beard or the cuts of their foreskins. I am proud of my Hinduism: I take pride in its diversity, in its openness, in religious freedom. When that great Hindu monk Swami Vivekananda electrified the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893, he said he was proud of Hinduism’s acceptance of all religions as true; of the refuge given to Jews and Zoroastrians when they were persecuted elsewhere. And he quoted an ancient Hindu hymn: “As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O lord, the different oaths which men take … all lead to thee.” My own father taught me the Vedic sloka “Aa no bhadrah kratvo yantu vishwatah” — “Let noble thoughts come to us from all directions of the universe.” Every schoolchild knows the motto “Ekam sad viprah bahuda vadanti” — “Truth is one, the sages give it various names.” Isn’t this all-embracing doctrine worth being proud of?

  But that’s not what Mr. Gupta is proud of when he says he’s proud to be a Hindu. He’s speaking of Hinduism as a label of identity, not a set of humane beliefs; he’s proud of being Hindu as if it were a team he belongs to, like a British football yob, not what the team stands for. I’ll never let the likes of him define for me what being a Hindu means.

  Defining a “Hindu” cause may partly be a political reaction to the definition of non-Hindu causes, but it is a foolish one for all that. Mahatma Gandhi was as devout a Rambhakt as you can get — he died from a Hindu assassin’s bullet with the words “Hé Ram” on his lips — but he always said that for him, Ram and Rahim were the same deity, and that if Hinduism ever taught hatred of Islam or of non-Hindus, “it is doomed to destruction.” The rage of the Hindu mobs being stoked by the bigots is the rage of those who feel them-selves supplanted in this competition of identities, who think that they are taking their country back from usurpers of long ago. They want revenge against history, but they do not realize that history is its own revenge.

  from transcript of Randy Diggs interview

  with Superintendent of Police Gurinder Singh

  October 14, 1989

  RD: I’ll accept that drink now, thanks. What happened next?

  GS: Lucky and I quickly realized that the only way the mob could be prevented from assembling below the house – the house from which the fucking bomb was thrown – was by getting there first ourselves. I grinned, and said to Lucky: “DM-sahib, time for us to take charge.”

  RD: They could have thrown their bombs at you.

  GS: That was the risk, clearly. But it was an acceptable risk. To prevent a far bigger tragedy.

  RD: And did the mob give way?

  GS: We had to keep shouting to the pissing processionists that they should stay back. That we were taking charge of the situation. Fortunately their more rabid leaders, people like Bhushan Sharma or Ram Charan Gupta, were not in that part of the crowd. They were in the front of the motherloving procession, leading it for glory, and word had not reached them yet from where we were. Most of the crowd listened to us and stayed at bay. Inevitably, though, some bloody idiots with the brains of a squashed cockroach edged forward behind us as we headed towards the house.

  RD: I’ve met Ram Charan Gupta.

  GS: Our next member of Parliament for Zalilgarh. Or so the pissing political pundits tell me. Ironically, considering what we think of each other, he publicly praised my handling of this particular incident.

  RD: What did you do?

  GS: I opened fire.

  RD: What?!

  GS: Look, you’ve got to understand. We not only had to take control of a situation that was on the verge of getting out of control. We also had to be seen by the bloodthirsty mob as taking effective action. What do you think we should have done? Knocked politely on the door and asked them to serve us some tea with their bombs? Once we’d got to the damned house from which the bomb was thrown, the choice was clear. Assert ourselves, or allow the mob to assert themselves. I ordered the ASI – the Assistant Sub-Inspector who accompanied me – to fire a couple of rounds at the house, and I let loose a burst or two myself. This served several purposes. First, the crowd was satisfied that effective action was being taken. So the bloody idiots understood that they did not need to take the law into their own hands. Second, the stream of bullets also intimidated the hotheads in the procession. Nothing like a volley from a good police-issue revolver to make an asshole think twice. This ensured that the crowd did not venture below the house and present easy targets for further bomb-throwing. And last but not least, as we always used to say in our high school debates, the firing also deterred the bombers themselves. Here they were, all poised and ready to throw more bombs, and my bullets come screaming in. What do they do? They were amateurs, Randy, and the first instinct of a frigging amateur when things get too hot is to drop everything and run. It’s one thing to plan to chuck some bombs at a howling mob armed with knives and tridents. Quite another to take on policemen with guns.

  RD: So what did they do?

  GS: They ran away. They ran for their bloody lives. The bombers were so frightened by our firing they were pissing in their pants as they tried to get the hell out of there. I sent a couple of my men to the rear of the house. They caught one of the young idiots. Took him down to the thana. I’ll spare you the details, but soon he was singing like a mynah bird. Don’t look so fucking shocked, Randy. I’ve seen enough of your American cop movies. Whatever they did to him to get the full story, it was a good deal less than the Hindu mob would have done. So I figure justice was served all around. And thanks to him my police case was very quickly closed.

  RD: What was his story?

  GS: The story? Very simple, very stupid. A small bunch of young Muslims – eight youths, two of them petty government servants, a municipal driver and a patwari – decided that they had to retaliate against the insults and provocations flung their way by the Hindu extremists. Sisterloving idiots, of course. But they felt alienated from the system – none of them was important enough to serve on any of our bloody peace committees, for instance. And they felt equally alienated from the mainstream of their own frigging community, which they felt was too passive. “Don’t we ha
ve pride?” one of them asked me in the interrogation room. “Don’t you have brains?” I replied. I mean, just think about their brilliant plan. They collected whatever money they could, which was not very much, a few hundred rupees between them. Then one of them went off to purchase gunpowder from a firecracker factory in the neighboring district, where firecrackers are a frigging cottage industry. Place isn’t even a real factory. It’s a factory the way Zalilgarh’s a town. Half their bloody phatakas fizzle out at Diwali time. Anyway, this is their great arsenal. The night before the major procession, Friday night, they stayed up in an abandoned ruin by the riverside. We call it the Kotli. No one uses it. They ground the gunpowder with pieces of broken glass and old rusted nails, tied these in newspaper with a string, and made seventeen of what are known in local parlance as “soothli bombs.” They figured that would account for a few dozen Hindus, and they hoped to run away in the confusion. They hadn’t given any pissing thought at all to what would happen to the house they’d have bombed from, to the basti, to the neighborhood. Frigging idiots.

  RD: Anyway, your tactic worked. Congratulations.

  GS: Worked? For about five minutes. We defused one crisis, but we couldn’t prevent the riot itself. Mobs were soon running rampant through the town, especially the Muslim quarter. Save your congratulations. I could use another drink.

  from Lakshman’s journal

  July 16, 1989

  I look into her eyes, into those eyes so impossibly blue, eyes of a color I have never looked into before, and I know she cannot understand.

  How could I, so well-read, so overeducated, so comfortable with her Western culture, have had an arranged marriage? We talk of Updike and Bellow and the Time magazine bestseller list, I play her my tapes of Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen and the Grateful Dead, she speaks of “Death of a Salesman” and I counter with “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” and it is as if we so comfortably inhabit the same world. But even as I hold her white hand in my own dark one, I know that for her these cultural references go together with other things, with Saturday dates in oversized Chevrolets and dressing up for the prom, with love and romance and sex before marriage. Not with the way I got married: parents contacting parents through intrusive intermediaries, a brief visit to the others’ home for an elaborate tea, a glimpse of an overdressed girl and a conversation so stilted and artificial it could not possibly be the basis of a lifetime commitment, let alone one consecrated by matched horoscopes and gold jewelry and the gift of a house in Madras by her grateful father, proud to have an IAS officer for a son-in-law.