Riot (9 page)

So why is this same Ghazi Miyan worshipped by the very Hindus he apparently attacked? Why do Hindu women pray at his tomb for a male child of his noble qualities? Why are songs and ballads to him sung by Hindus? And they were — in fact many of these songs were collected by British colonial ethnographers in the late nineteenth century across a wide swath of North India from Delhi to Varanasi. Now, what's interesting about them is that they tell a different story, of a warrior born with the curse that he would die unwed, who was killed on the day of his wedding when he went forth to protect his herds and his herdsmen from the marauding Hindu Raja Sohal Deo.

And what did his herds consist of? Of cows! Now, doesn't that ring any bells for you? Does the youthful warrior defending his cows not remind you of Lord Krishna of Hindu legend, seducer of milkmaids and protector of cows? In fact, in one of the popular ballads, it is Krishna's foster mother, Jashodha, who makes a dramatic entry into the wedding celebrations of Ghazi Miyan, drenched in the blood of cowherds slaughtered by Raja Sohal Deo, and pleads with him to rise to the defense of the cows. Imagine the scene as this young Muslim bridegroom rises, casts aside his wedding finery, begs forgiveness from his mother, straps on his sword, and walks out to do battle against the killer of kine. It's stirring stuff, I tell you, and there's more in the songs and ballads I've collected: tales reinventing episodes from the Ramayana, tales featuring Krishna himself, all wrapped up in the life of Ghazi Miyan, and sometimes in the miraculous powers of his tomb.

What explains these contradictory legends, of the martyred jihadi revered by Muslim fundamentalists and the noble cow-protector worshipped by ordinary Hindus? Extremists of both stripes have sought to discredit the secular appeal of Ghazi Miyan. The Hindu fundamentalists have attacked the ballads as fraudulent tales made up by scheming Muslim tricksters to hoodwink gullible Hindus. They've also given much circulation to the jihadi versions of Ghazi Miyan's story. And as to the episode of the cows, they argue that the cows had actually been earmarked for slaughter at Ghazi Miyan's wedding feast, and that the reason Raja Sohal Deo attacked the Ghazi's cowherds was in order to liberate the cows from certain death at the hands of the Muslims. Hindus, they say, have been duped for centuries into worshipping an oppressor, and a foreign invader at that. The Hindutva types lament that the offerings made by Hindus at the Ghazi's tomb go to support Islamic schools, hospitals, and mosques — the very fact that the secularists hail as evidence of composite religiosity.

Every year for centuries, perhaps indeed since 1034, Ghazi Miyan's wedding ceremony is rescheduled around the supposed date of the real event. It's always interrupted, as the original event was. Hundreds of baraats, marriage parties, converge on the shrine, but always some “unexpected” calamity — a thunderstorm or even the hint of one will do — leads them to abandon the ceremony. The marriage does not take place. That's the ritual. But the baraats, both Hindu and Muslim, will be back next year.

That's the story I want to look into. There's a wealth of material to collect, some of it around Bahraich, but a lot in the Zalilgarh area too. I'm meeting up with some of the Dafali singers who popularize the ballads to the Ghazi. And I'm staying in town with the sadr here, Rauf-bhai — I don't know if you know him? You do? He's a cousin of my mother's, and one gets a sense of Islam as it is practiced in small-town Uttar Pradesh just by waking up every morning in the Muslim basti and talking to the neighbors.

The whole point is that historians like myself, who haven't sold our souls to either side in this wretched ongoing communal argument, have a duty to dig into the myths that divide and unite our people. The Hindutva brigade is busy trying to invent a new past for the nation, fabricating historical wrongs they want to right, dredging up “evidence” of Muslim malfeasance and misappropriation of national glory. They are making us into a large-scale Pakistan; they are vindicating the two-nation theory. They know not what damage they are doing to the fabric of our society. They want to “teach” people like me “a lesson,” though they have not learned many lessons themselves. I often think of Mohammed Iqbal, the great Urdu poet who wrote, “Sare jahan se achha Hindustan hamara” — “Better than all the world is our India” — and who is also reviled for his advocacy of Pakistan, though what he wanted was a Muslim homeland within a confederal India. Iqbal-sahib wrote a couplet that is not often quoted these days: “Tumhari tahzeeb khud apne khanjar se khudkhushi karegi / Jo shukh-i-nazuk pe aashiyan banega, napaidar hoga.” Oh, I'm sorry, you're a good Southie who doesn't understand much Urdu. What he's saying is that ours is a civilization that will commit suicide out of its own complexity; he who builds a nest on frail branches is doomed to destruction. The problem is that our Hindu chauvinists don't read much Iqbal these days.

 

letter from Priscilla Hart to Cindy Valeriani

February 16, 1989

…

I couldn't face the prospect of going to dinner with his wife after what had happened, so I told him to make some excuse for me — that I had developed a headache, or something. He didn't hide his disappointment, or the fact that he wasn't looking forward to the prospect of his wife's displeasure after he'd rung her and got her to organize the meal. He made me promise to come some other time — and, since I had been to dinner at his place earlier, I said yes.

In the morning a note arrived for me at the office, in a government envelope in the hands of a uniformed messenger (or peon, as they quaintly call them in India). “My dear Priscilla,” it began, and I imagined him trying various salutations — “Priscilla” (too abrupt), “Darling Priscilla” (too effusive), “Dear Priscilla” (too routine), maybe even “Dearest Priscilla” (too premature!) — before settling on “My dear.” His handwriting was firm, clear, rapid. “It was wonderful being with you yesterday. Please forgive me for this means of communication, but I realize you have no phone at home, and I must see you again. Please ring me if you can — my direct line is 23648. Or send me a note through the peon who is carrying this envelope. Yours, Lakshman.” (Again, how long had he hesitated over that closing? “Yours sincerely”? Too formal. “Yours very sincerely”? Too insincere. “Yours ever”? Too presumptuous. So the simple, slightly suggestive “Yours” — I liked it.)

I hesitated for no more than a few seconds. Using the office phone — and we had only one — for a personal conversation was out of the question. So I scrawled on the same sheet of notepaper: “same time, same place, tomorrow?” The peon bowed and salaamed when I gave him the envelope.

Oh, Cindy, I know what you're thinking and it's not so. I wish we could talk. I miss you so much, Cindy. There's nothing I'd rather have more than one of our long sessions curled up on your bed, hugging those monstrously fat and cuddly pillows of yours (you should see the hard thin slab that passes for a pillow in Zalilgarh) and just talking. Writing to you about all of this isn't really the same thing, and I'm so out of practice writing letters that I'm not sure I'm telling you really how I feel. I know the things that would worry you about all this — he's married, he's Indian, I'm far away and lonely and don't know what I'm doing. If I were you, I'd worry about me too! But Lakshman's special, he really is, and I know I want to be with him more than anything in the world. Am I crazy, Cindy? Don't bother replying to that question — by the time your answer arrives I'll know whether I've just been really dumb or whether I've simply found Mr. Right in the wrong place at the wrong time….

 

transcript of Randy Diggs interview
with District Magistrate V. Lakshman (Part 1)

October 13, 1989

RD:
Mr. District Magistrate, thank you for agreeing to see me. I'm Randy Diggs, South Asia correspondent of the New York Journal. Here's my card.

VL:
Thanks. Here's mine. But I suppose you know who I am.

RD:
I know who you are, Mr. Lakshman.

VL:
So what can I do for you?

RD:
I'm doing a story on the young American woman who was killed here last month, Priscilla Hart.

VL:
Yes. Priscilla.

RD:
And I thought I'd find out from you as much as you can tell me about the circumstances of her killing.

VL:
The circumstances?

RD:
The riot. The events that led to the tragedy. Her own role in those events. Anything that can explain her death.

VL:
She had no role in the events. That was the tragedy.

RD:
She—

VL:
She was here to work on a population project. And study the role of women in Indian society. She had nothing to do with the Hindu-Muslim nonsense.

RD:
So she was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

VL:
I suppose you could say that. If there is such a thing as the wrong place, or the wrong time. We are where we are at the only time we have. Perhaps it's where we're meant to be.

RD:
Well, I—

VL:
Don't worry, I'm not going to entrap you in philosophical arguments. You're here to talk to the DM about the riot, and I'll tell you about the riot. Do have some tea.

RD:
Thanks. Is this already sugared?

VL:
I'm afraid so. That's the way they serve it around here. Is it all right?

RD:
That's fine. Tell me about the riot.

VL:
You know about the Ram Sila Poojan? On 15 September, the Bharatiya Janata Party and its militant “Hindutva” allies announced the launching of direct action to build a Ram temple at the disputed site of the Babri Masjid at Ayodhya. The legal and political processes they could have resorted to in order to achieve this agenda were abandoned. It was clear from the kind of language their leaders were using that there would be an all-out and, if necessary, violent battle to accomplish their goal.

RD:
Sorry, just checking if this is recording properly … it's fine. “Accomplish their goal.” Please go on.

VL:
Okay, where was I? Oh, yes. Trouble started elsewhere before it got here. In the next few days, much of North India was seized by a frenzy unprecedented since Partition. Groups of surcharged young men paraded the streets in every town, morning and evening, day after day, aggressively bearing bricks in the name of Ram, throwing slogans at the Muslims like acid. Slogans which were horrible in their virulence, their crudeness, their naked aggression. The Muslims, huddled in their ghettoes, watched with disbelief and horror, which turned quickly to cold terror and sullen anger.

RD:
You couldn't stop them? Ban the Ram Sila Poojan program?

VL:
I wished I could. I saw what was happening as nothing less than an assault on the political values of secular India. I asked permission to ban the processions in my district. It was denied. Only West Bengal, where the communists have a pretty firm hold on power, actually banned the Ram Sila Poojan program. The other state governments were trying to have it both ways. They proclaimed their secularism but did nothing to maintain it. They didn't want to alienate the Hindutva types, so they refused to ban the Ram Sila Poojan. They probably thought, to give them some credit, that banning it would simply give the Hindutva movement the aura of martyrdom and so help them attract even more support. So they let it go ahead. There were certainly some in the government who had a sneaking sympathy for the cause of rebuilding the Ram Janmabhoomi temple. Not just sneaking: many expressed it openly. So the government's inaction in the face of all this provocation profoundly alienated the Muslims. For many of them, their faith and hope in Indian secularism, built over four decades of dogged efforts by successive administrations, soured.

RD:
So tensions were high among the Muslims that day.

VL:
Tensions were high. And not just amongst the Muslims. The Hindu community was in a state of great agitation. Their leaders — or perhaps I should say, those who claimed to speak in their name — were openly whipping up passions on the Ram Janmabhoomi issue. Even the media and intelligentsia were quickly infected by the communal dementia sweeping the land.

RD:
And the secular voices?

VL:
What secular voices? There was a deafening silence.

RD:
Was this a widespread phenomenon or did you have a particular problem on your hands here in Zalilgarh?

VL:
It was pretty widespread in this part of the country: U.P. — you know, Uttar Pradesh — Bihar, parts of Madhya Pradesh. Not so much where I come from, in the South. But here, it was pretty bad. In less than ten days after the announcement of the Ram Sila Poojan, riots broke out in town after town — militant processions brandishing Ram bricks, shouting hate-filled slogans day after day, violent retaliation by small Muslim groups, followed by carnage, deaths, arson, and finally curfew. At one point around three weeks after the launching of the program, as many as 108 towns were simultaneously under curfew.

RD:
Tell me about Zalilgarh.

VL:
Well, you're here, you've seen it. It's a small district town in Uttar Pradesh. Not much to write home about! But like any other small town in these parts, Zalilgarh could hardly remain untouched by the sectarian fever that had infected the land. An undersized, haphazardly planned town of fewer than one lakh persons—

RD:
A hundred thousand?

VL:
That's right. About a lakh. With an uneasy balance of almost equal strengths of Hindus and Muslims. In fact, I discovered soon after I arrived that Zalilgarh is classified in official files as “communally hypersensitive.” The records show that the first communal clash took place as far back as 1921.