Akbar “Dumpy” Ahmad, a former crony of Sanjay Gandhi, was addressing the people, wrestling with the lectern as he shouted, waving his arms in apparent anger, throwing off flower garlands as they were passed up to him, imploring voters to quit Congress (as he had done) and support the BSP. “My father was the first Muslim chief of police in UP,” he declaimed in Urdu, “my grandfather was chief justice of Allahabad high court, and I stood beside Sanjay Gandhi when he launched his youth campaign. And today, Muslims must vote with Mayawati and back the BSP.” Voting for somebody was certainly essential: that day, the Darul Uloom religious school in Deoband had issued a fatwa saying all Muslims must exercise their democratic right: “A vote is as important as a testimony or a witness is in Islam.”28 As Dumpy Ahmad was speaking, someone drove a motorbike through the crowd, knocking people down, not accidentally.
It looked as if a riot might be starting, and we sheltered in the lobby of a nearby hotel. Idris knew the owner. “We call him the wrestler,” he said.
The wrestler, whose shirt was not fresh and whose mouth was stained with paan, began to tell a story that was so convoluted I soon lost track. While he spoke a boy or man with a vacant expression and a number 11 football shirt stood beside him in attendance, listening. It seemed, in essence, that he was a butcher-cum-wrestler-cum-hotel-owner and his family were involved in a blood feud with another family. “It has been going for about forty-five years, and now nearly everybody is dead.” Some killings—from their side—had been done with a white-handled “Astra” pistol, imported from Spain. It was a particularly good and reliable pistol. “About twenty in all have died,” he continued, chewing, “though with the violence there has always been love.” It was hard to know what he meant, or indeed if the story was true. He turned to Idris, and then back to me and said in English, “And a lot of love also.” What had happened to the family pistol? The wrestler reached into the tight pocket of his trousers, pulled out a handgun and broke it to show it was loaded. He handed it to the attendant, chewed his paan some more and reached into a different pocket. Out came the notorious white-handled Astra pistol. He gave it to me. I looked at the weapon, wondered what to do with it and gave it back to him. The noise outside had quietened, and we left. Did that happen? I asked Idris. “We call him Naim Beta,” he said. “He’s from a family of local wrestlers, but there are not many left now after the blood feud. He’s got several politicians staying at his hotel tonight, and he thinks he needs the gun to guard them.”
We were driving back through the dereliction, past bamboo and timber yards, when Yusuf got a call on his mobile phone. “You were asking about Dumpy,” he said to me. “He’s just at the railway station if you want to meet him.” We diverted, being detained for ten minutes at a level crossing while an interminable goods train rumbled through. Trains in India seemed to be three times longer than trains anywhere else. Our driver stopped right in front of the station—although the area was blocked by a security detail—and Idris told Yusuf and me to go ahead. We ran over the railway bridge and pushed through a scrum of BSP supporters to reach Dumpy’s carriage. He was standing by the open door, enjoying the crowd’s attention, a short, energetic man with a bristly beard and a blue stole around his neck. He caught sight of Yusuf. “Hey, Yusuf, are you still with the Congress?” Dumpy pretended to be disconsolate, playing the situation. He turned to me: “These babalogs have a lot to learn, they think they’re still at Cambridge or Oxford Street. Mayawati is the future for India, and not just in UP, I can promise you. Sonia and Rahul are going nowhere.” The train was about to whistle out of the station. I asked Dumpy about his days with Sanjay. “I was practising as a chartered accountant when Sanjay asked me to join politics. I knew Sanjay. Mrs. Gandhi said I was like her third son. Then when he died, Mrs. Gandhi threw Maneka out on the street and I was the only one who stood by her.” How did Maneka repay him? The train started to move. “She gave me a kick up the ass.” What would Sanjay Gandhi have thought of his son Varun wanting to chop off the hands of those who insulted Hindus? “He would be disgusted,” said Dumpy Ahmad.29
When Yusuf and I had run over the railway bridge to reach the train, an extraordinary thing had happened. Marching along the main platform of Kanpur railway station came two columns of armed police, and in their midst a very tall man in a spotless white kurta pyjama. As the procession advanced, people had turned and bowed and been acknowledged with a grand wave. It was the don of dons, Mukhtar Ansari, returning late in the evening from his bail hearing. Yusuf walked past the sleeping figures, the piles of dusty boxes and the vendors carrying clay pots of water, pushed past the deferential policemen and greeted his cousin in the traditional way, with a cross between a shoulder bump, a bow and a hug. He introduced me, and Mukhtar suggested we come and visit him in the prison tomorrow, but to be sure to bring some oranges. In the topsy-turvy world of Uttar Pradesh, there was nothing so strange about seeing the outlaw striding along the railway platform, looking like a senior politician.
The next day we ate tahri, a dish like biryani, and drove to the jail. “Mukhtar’s obsessed by National Geographic and Animal Planet on Discovery,” said Yusuf on the way. “He analyses big cats. He’ll lay bets with his entourage about animal fights—say, whether a lion will catch a gazelle. He wants to know why an animal does or doesn’t get away.”
“Yesterday?” asked Mukhtar Ansari, speaking in Urdu. He rubbed his hand over his substantial black moustache, which was twirling up at the tips. “Yesterday … I had a case heard in Chandoli.” We were in a cavernous, limewashed barracks—his barracks. At the gate a seal of purple indelible ink had been stamped on both of my wrists, like the stamp you get when going into a nightclub. It read: “Office of the Gatekeeper, District Jail, Kanpur” in Devanagari script (the word “gatekeeper” had passed into Hindi). Along one wall were tables, where prison stewards were preparing watermelons. Mukhtar was in blue jeans and a flowery red shirt, sitting up on his bed cross-legged. He was hugely tall and big, though not fat, and wore a long, thin scrunchy scarf, of the kind worn by students in France. I noticed we had the same brand of spectacles. When Yusuf told him I had thought he looked like a government minister walking through the railway station, Mukhtar was delighted, and he relaxed.
“I entered politics because I was concerned about justice and the persecution of the oppressed. The Dalits and bonded labourers in eastern UP are treated like scum. I took up arms against this way of living in Joga village back in 1985, although I come from a distinguished family background. I have won six consecutive elections as an independent MLA [state legislator]. The Bhumihars killed some people in 1990 and knocked down a statue of Dr. Ambedkar. The oppressed went after them and killed about twenty.” Mukhtar had a low and resonant voice. “The war against landlord oppression involves a constant battle to mobilize. I used my reputation. I had 20,000 or 25,000 men, and my army was Muslim, Brahmin, Thakur, Dalit—everyone. We could mobilize at a week’s notice. We had licensed rifles. Our opponents the Ranvir Sena [a notoriously violent upper-caste militia from Bihar] had more weapons.”
It was not easy to have a conversation with Mukhtar, since every few moments one of his attendants would approach with a mobile phone. “Inshallah, inshallah,” he said to someone down the line. Nor were Yusuf and I the only visitors. An old man in a baseball cap appeared, a follower of the prominent Hindu swami Baba Jai Gurudev, who was building a temple. “Baba Jai Gurudev has no contact with political parties,” the baseball cap told me as he waited for a consultation, “but he sees Mukhtar Ansari as a good man for India.” He was an emissary of the baba, promising support in the election. “In Benares, everyone is connected with Mukhtar Ansari. We think he will have a big victory.” Later, I looked at the baba’s website: “The soul has an eye, an ear and a nostril but all these are closed at present due to past good or bad deeds. Through meditation and mercy of the Master these can be removed.” Perhaps the godman was hedging his bets and offering blessings to several candidates.
&nb
sp; Mukhtar portrayed his life as a justified and even inevitable response to the social imbalance and caste feuding in eastern Uttar Pradesh. “That part of our state is poverty-stricken. Generation after generation has to live on subsistence farming. The minorities are subject to the injustice of the Congress party. As an elected representative, I give all the money I make directly to the community in Mau. I arrange marriages, organize education, health clinics and eye clinics, I give out blankets and saris—and not only at election time. If someone calls me a ‘mafia don’ it makes no difference. Can they name one person I have attacked who comes from a weaker section? I have always fought against the powerful, I have taken power from them. I will continue what I am doing until the end of my days.” Was he afraid? “Death only comes once.”
A mobile phone was brought and held close to his ear by a helper. “Baba, inshallah,” he said. Mukhtar had to run his election campaign from prison, although out on the streets of Benares, activists were campaigning for him in the thousands. His future depended on a victory: if he were elected, there was a good chance the legal cases against him would go quiet. Could he beat Murli Manohar Joshi? “They have been using blatantly communal images against me. In one of their pictures I was depicted as Aurangzeb at Kashi Vishwanath temple, blood dripping from a sword, lightning coming from the sky, standing with my foot on the statues. M. M. Joshi is a fascist, a very low, petty, filthy human being, an enemy of the state, and an enemy of love and fraternal feeling, and I am gratified to be fighting against him. He came to Benares to play Hindu politics. No Indian patriot can seek to divide us on the basis of religion. If he says that, he’s a traitor. I am ready for those people to slaughter swine and throw them in a mosque, or slaughter cows and put them in a temple. I have warned them about it from my prison cell. But the election commission said I can’t have publicity, I can’t use a phone for my campaign. I am waiting for the court to release me. I’ve been in jail for forty-three months. So I read books, especially historical and revolutionary books. I will buy 2,000 copies of your book if it’s any good, and distribute it to my people. My family fought in the freedom movement, and it’s the same for me. I like Mahatma Gandhi, but if non-violence is not working, I say: ‘Laton ke bhoot baton se nahin maante’ ”—“If a devil isn’t listening to you, you have to give him a kick.”
Three surprise visitors appeared: Mukhtar’s wife, in a turquoise and silver salwar kameez with a black coat and pair of big sunglasses and dark lipstick, and their sons, aged eleven and sixteen. The elder boy wore an Armani belt, and the younger was chubby and cute. The family all sat up on the bed, close and affectionate with each other. The boys were studying at St. Francis’ College in Lucknow. “They’re going into the army,” said Mukhtar. He meant the Indian army, not his private force. I asked Abbas, the elder, why he was joining up. “I want to fight the terrorists,” he said in English. “I am going to attack on Pakistan and fight the criminals and all.” Mukhtar looked proud. “It’s in their blood,” he said. The younger boy, Omar, piped up in English too. “I am going to RULE on Pakistan.” We laughed and began talking about the Taliban. Mukhtar was of the view that they were being paid by a foreign power—probably the Americans—to blacken the name of Islam. “Nowhere in our religion does it say to kill innocents, and that is what they do.” Mrs. Ansari was silent, in a traditional way; it was like a social gathering of men, although we were in a prison barracks.
“When I get out,” said Mukhtar, “I want to travel. I’ve been on the Haj and to Thailand, and I want to go to Mecca again, and to hunt lions in South Africa—where I’ve heard it’s legal. I’ll buy hunting accessories and see the black-maned lion in Namibia. My ambition is to visit the U.S.A., and see what progress America has made, and what we in UP can take from there to practise in our own part of the world.”30
We left them, sitting up on the bed, a close family. As the wrestler had said: “With the violence there has always been love.” Back at the house, Yusuf’s mother said to me: “If you want to go to Lucknow, you might get a lift with Cyrus. He’s been visiting the arms factory in Kanpur and is going back this evening.” I pictured a journey through the badlands of Uttar Pradesh with a trunk full of weapons. But she explained that Cyrus, a Parsi with damaged legs, had been visiting a medical factory which made prosthetic arms, so as to get his calipers tightened. “Godspeed,” said Yusuf as we drove away. Cyrus and I reached Lucknow, Mayawati’s fiefdom, by nightfall.
Mukhtar Ansari did not win the race in Benares: he was beaten by a narrow margin by Murli Manohar Joshi. Not long afterwards, claiming she had information he was still involved in criminal activity, Mayawati expelled him from the BSP. A while later he was transferred from Kanpur to the political section of Tihar jail in Delhi. Had he won the election, there was little doubt Mukhtar would have been sitting in the Indian Parliament as one of Mayawati’s honourable MPs, rather than in a prison cell.
Ambedkar’s revolution—or the revolution done in Dr. Ambedkar’s name—is about assertion. Its details are less important than its message: India’s Dalits can and will take power for themselves. Now in her fifties with her hair cut short, honoured with giant garlands of banknotes at her public appearances, Mayawati is the message, the symbol. “Chamari hoon, kunwari hoon, tumhari hoon,” she likes to say at the start of her speeches. “I’m a Chamar, I’m not married, I’m yours!” And the audience, who know that no woman of her caste has been in such a powerful position, scream their applause. With her rough Hindi and her contemptuous view of political conventions, she represents everything the old ruling class despises and fears. When a senior Congress leader, herself the daughter of a former Uttar Pradesh chief minister, said Mayawati deserved to be raped, the response was explosive. The unexpressed implication was that since Mayawati was a Dalit, she could be raped with impunity, and shown her place as others had been before her. The Congress leader quickly apologized, saying she had spoken in anger, but not before she had been put in prison and had her house set on fire.31
Ambedkar, analysing the plight of untouchables in his writing, was conscious always of the antiquity of his dispossession. Conventions dating back to the era before the birth of Christ specified that the rejected castes should not be allowed to accumulate possessions, gain education or bear arms. “There is no code of laws more infamous regarding social rights than the Laws of Manu,” he wrote. “The lower classes of Hindus have been completely disabled for direct action on account of this wretched system of [caste].”32 Yet Ambedkar was affected by the colonial thinking of the time, the belief that all controls were unvarying. The authority for Manu’s “laws” was William Jones, an eighteenth-century British judge who had translated from Sanskrit what he called “the Indian system of duties, religious and civil”—with an explicitly political ambition. Jones hoped his book would help in the preparation of “a Code which may supply the many natural defects in the old jurisprudence of this country [in] a commercial age.”
He was saying, essentially, that Europeans did not know what was going on in Indian society and needed a myriad of alien behaviours to be explained and contained. Since their ability to exert physical control was limited, the British rulers planned “to leave the natives of these Indian provinces in possession of their own Laws,” and he hoped that, in future, “the administration of justice and government in India, will be conformable, as far as the natives are affected by them, to the manners and opinions of the natives themselves; an object which cannot possibly be attained, until those manners and opinions can be fully and accurately known.”33 Jones regarded the laws of Manu as a basis for future conduct: “The style of it has a certain austere majesty that sounds like the language of legislation and exhorts a respectful awe; the sentiments of independence on all beings but God, and the harsh admonitions even to kings are truly noble.”34
The laws or teachings of Manu, the Manusmriti, are hard to interpret from a distance of over two millennia. The text is a guide to life and to how a just king should rule. Jones w
as taken by their regulatory aspect, which seemed to decode a complex society: “Rice pudding boiled with tila, frumenty, rice-milk, and baked bread, which have not been first offered to some deity, flesh meat also … must all be carefully shunned.”35 Many of the rules on pollution and food were (and are) still followed in India, but much of the text appears specific to an antique world. So at a ceremony for the dead you should exclude a man who has shed his semen in violation of a vow, a man who allows his wife’s lover to live in his house, the sexually irregular (including “a man who allows his mouth to be used as a vagina”) and anyone with mangled fingernails or discoloured teeth. If you know the law, you “should not offer even a little water to a twice-born man who acts like a cat.” If a goldsmith behaves dishonestly, “the king should have him cut to pieces with razors.” If a “ ‘Fierce Untouchable’ man” has sex with a tribal woman, “the evil ‘Puppy-cooker’ is born, who makes his livelihood from the vice of [digging up and selling] roots and is always despised by good people.”36
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