| December
6, 2007
The
Death of Minorityism
Aftershocks
from the Demolition of the Babri Mosque
By FARZANA
VERSEY
The
16th century Babri Mosque in Uttar Pradesh, India,
was destroyed by Hindu zealots on December 6, 1992.
It
looked like baby puke. The glass of milk with a tinge of rose syrup,
globules of congealed white floating in it. The man’s shop
had been destroyed, the wooden slats of his roof had caved in, but
he had tottered outside in the dark corridor and brought this for
his guests. The window panes had broken and through a pointed shard
he showed us the ruins.
I
drank up the milk. Had I refused, it would have been an insult to
his poverty, a mockery of the self-respect he was hanging on to.
It
was days after the demolition of the Babri Mosque.
December
6 is a day I remember every year. 15 years have passed. Justice
is still blind. Those who helped bring down the structure came to
rule at the Centre of one of the most thriving democracies in the
world; those who incited violence held positions of power.
Today,
there is news about the Gujarat elections and its communalization.
Gujarat’s history goes back to Ayodhya. Ayodhya goes back
to centuries. Those centuries regurgitated began the death knell
of minorityism, as we understand it.
“Are
you a conservative?” she asked, as she gave me the once-over
and shook her head. My clothes did not fit into her version.
“Are
you a moderate?” I don’t look like I’d do anything
in moderation, so that option was ruled out too.
“Are
you a liberal?”
Why
were these questions being asked?
Why
must December 6 constitute my personal history?
Why
do I write about it? Because I don’t want to forget, I don’t
want anyone to forget.
Oh,
it isn’t quite the Holocaust, they have told me. I know that.
I have seen the skeletons of bunks in Dachau and felt like I was
walking through the museum it was. I felt no pain.
This
isn’t even the Partition of India, they say. Again, they are
right. I wasn’t around then and I feel no link with that time.
December
6 I know because it grabbed me, wrenching an identity out of the
lump in my throat. In the eyes of the objective world, it became
a drama queen moment. Female hysteria, they said each time I wet
the pages with tears.
“You
don’t even pray,” they said. “So how does that
mosque’s demolition bother you?”
It
wasn’t the mosque.
What
was then called Bombay still tried valiantly to be the intellectual
slut; you could get what you wanted for a price. People held hands
for peace, they collected clothes, they carped. I got grilles fixed
on the outside door. Animals in a zoo.
The
papers are silent now. The day is not significant unless a bomb
blast takes place or elections are held in some part of the country.
My
city had turned into a mortuary. The first day I had walked down
the road, unaware of anything. Then someone said the phone lines
were down. My pace quickened. As I was rushing past, the lady waddling
beside me said, “Can you please walk with me? I have to get
my grandson back from school. I am scared about what will happen.”
I
was trapped. She was a Hindu. Why was she scared? I wanted to say
something, but her face lined with creases stopped me. I slowed
down, every step I took making me aware that things had changed.
Her destination arrived. I could not even fake a smile. I nodded
and went my way.
Her
people had done it.
Today,
December 6, 2007, my friend is leaving for ‘home’. She
lives in America. 15 years ago we had gone together to those places.
She was shooting a video film. I was asking the questions. In one
particular area, a group of rich traders from the majority community
told us how their businesses were destroyed. They found no mention
in her video; my article gave them equal say. Not because what they
said was important but because I was forced by my minority status
to give both sides. I wanted to hit them in their starched clothes
and shiny gold watches. I wanted to hit them because I had folded
my hands in greeting.
“Namaste,”
I had said, which is not unusual for us as Indians.
They
said they could not offer us anything as one fellow chewed his beetle-nut
leaf spiked with the colour of death. Deaths he had not seen. He
asked me my name. I did not lie. “Oh,” is all he said.
Then,
as though describing a far-away place in a matter-of-fact manner,
he showed us a roundabout which acted as a demarcation. “Beyond
that we call the place mini-Pakistan,” as he spit out crimson
juice.
That
is where the houses had been shattered and glasses of milk with
rose petals were offered to us. There was silence in the voices,
numbness in the eyes there.
Today
I remembered the face of the father, aged more than his age. His
young daughter sat in a corner. She would not go to school again.
“English medium,” he had said with pride. They did not
ask me my name. They did not ask me my religion. While leaving I
impulsively said, “Khuda Hafiz”. I was like them. I
had to stop pretending that the hazelnut-tinged cappuccino the white-gloved
waiters brought me would make any difference.
My
windows had not shattered; my cocoon did.
Today,
I wanted to remind my friend. I hesitated. She told me about her
other projects. She was headed home. I was home. I was living the
reminder. I kept quiet, my voice as still as the old man’s
15 years ago.
Did
I become a communalist? A rabid leader had said then, “If
you have the guts, then deprive the Muslims of their voting rights,
all these ‘communalists’ will become Hindutvawadis in
no time.” Every sensible person who got angry about it was
seen as a sane voice. Even the person who uttered these words was
not considered insane simply because he, and they, were speaking
from a position of authority.
The
minute I opened my mouth I became “that Muslim woman using
the minority card”. Terms like “paranoia” and
“persecution complex” were used regularly.
Yes,
I had become paranoid. I am not used to seeing blood stains and
bullets and hearing stories about cops standing on the roofs of
houses shooting young boys in the bylanes. I am not used to having
people I know being asked to drop their pants to show whether they
had a foreskin and if they did not they were bundled into jeeps.
They became a threat. Circumcision was a threat.
Then
came 9/11.
In
The Black Pages, George Berglund 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. If he were one of us, he’d fret – for life,
limb, and sanity.
As
a former American officer who controlled the nuclear weapons for
a NATO unit, his stint having “convinced me that the world
was insane”, he was able to see street power. “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.”
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?”
Bombay
is a city known to get back on its feet. No one notices the cracked
soles. The battleground was in Uttar Pradesh but the tremors were
felt in the moolah-metro.
Excavations
have taken place since to ascertain whether Lord Rama was born there.
People were told not to damage the makeshift temple. It is a known
fact that Hindus install pandals (tents) at will anywhere and they
can be moved at any given time. And who were these worshippers?
Where had they sprung from? Since 1993? In that case, the argument
against the Muslims that they need not have got so agitated about
the demolition of the Babri Masjid since no one prayed there would
not hold. Does anyone remember Justice P. K. Bahri who had stated
then that in a democracy such things happen, that it was an emotional
issue and even if the Centre had produced evidence that it was pre-planned,
the good judge felt such evidence would show, “that some sincere
efforts were made by the leaders present on the dais that day, requesting
such ‘kar sevaks’ not to cause damage to the disputed
structure at all”?
It
was a lie. The leaders on the dais were shouting in Hindi, “Dhakka
maaro (break it)”; they expressed their happiness openly when
the task was accomplished and some leaders even admitted there were
more mandir votes than masjid votes.
In
fact, no Muslim will vote on the strength of an assurance that the
Babri Masjid will be restored, but many Hindus will whenever they
are reminded about bricks and restoration of the temple.
15
years later Narendra Modi is reaping the benefits on that moment.
It
is important to remember this date because it heralded the second
Partition of India where geographical maps were carved in minds.
“Are you proud of being a Muslim?” I am asked.
It
was not soaring ambition with me and I have not contributed to acquiring
it, so there is no pride. I can see the flaws. But, I do not shy
away from admitting that I do not eat pork. I do not hesitate to
say that I belong to a minority community.
“You
are hardly the type to represent Muslims,” they
tell me.
Perhaps,
they are right. I am only representing a muffled voice. A voice
in the dark corridor carrying a glass of milk and a hand waving
from a broken window. I represent the elite minds caged behind grilles.
I represent my own helplessness. I represent a byline that makes
them uncomfortable because it is a ‘Mossie’ name talking
‘Mossie’ things while not being ‘Mossie’
enough to pin against a wall. I woke up to those pinned against
walls.
December
6 made me a political animal. It taught me about animus. Animus
that cleaved through souls.
Farzana
Versey is a Mumbai-based writer-columnist. She can be reached
at kaaghaz.kalam@gmail.com
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