Riot (6 page)

So language divides. And this is compounded by the fact that, within a decade after independence, the government reorganized the states on linguistic lines, so most language groups have their own political entities to look toward to give expression to their linguistic identity. The people of Punjab speak Punjabi, of Bengal Bengali, of Tamil Nadu Tamil, and so on. So we have the twenty-five states in the Indian Union becoming ethnolinguistic entities, helping give rise to strong regional feeling going beyond the states themselves. The “Hindi belt” in the North — overpopulated, illiterate, poor and clamorous — is resented by many in the better-educated, more prosperous South. And both are seen as distant and self-obsessed by the neglected Northeast. There's a real risk of disaffection here, especially as long as power remains concentrated in Delhi and the outlying states find themselves on the periphery, paying tribute to the north.

Next, caste. That's basically a Hindu phenomenon, but caste is hardly unknown amongst converts to other faiths, including egalitarian ones like Sikhism, Christianity, and Islam. There are hundreds of castes and subcastes across the country, but they're broadly grouped into four major castes — the Brahmins, who're the priests and the men of learning (which in the old days was the same thing); the Kshatriyas, who were the warriors and kings; the Vaishyas, who were the farmers and merchants; and the Sudras, who were the artisans and manual workers. Outside the caste system were the untouchables, who did menial and polluting work, scavenging, sweeping streets, removing human waste, cleaning toilets, collecting the ashes from funeral pyres. Mahatma Gandhi tried to uplift them and called them Harijans, or children of God; they soon found that patronizing and now prefer to call themselves the Dalits, the oppressed. One interesting detail that's often overlooked: the top three castes account for fewer than twenty percent of the population. There's a source of division to think about.

Class comes next. It's not the same as caste, because you can be a poor Brahmin or a rich Vaishya, but as with caste, the vast majority of Indians are in the underclass. The privileged elite is, at best, five percent of the country; the middle class accounts for perhaps another twenty percent of the population; the rest of India is lower class. You can understand why the communist parties thought the country was ripe for revolution. Of course they were wrong, and one of the main reasons they were wrong (I'll come to the other main reason in a minute) was the extent to which they underestimated the fatalism of the Indian poor, their willingness to conform to millennia of social conditioning.

This was because of the fifth great source of division in India, religion. Hinduism is great for encouraging social peace, because everyone basically believes their suffering in this life is the result of misdeeds in a past one, and their miseries in this world will be addressed in the next if only they'd shut up and be good and accept things as they are, injustices included. So Hinduism is the best antidote to Marxism. It's interesting, in fact, how many of the leading communists before Partition were Muslims, because of their natural predisposition to egalitarianism. And Brahmins, because they had a natural affinity for dictatorships, even of the proletariat. But religion also breeds what we in this country call “communalism” — the sense of religious chauvinism that transforms itself into bigotry, and sometimes violence, against the followers of other faiths. Now we have practically every religion on earth represented on Indian soil, with the possible exception of Shintoism. So we've seen various kinds of clashes in our history — Hindu-Muslim, Muslim-Sikh, Sikh-Hindu, Hindu-Christian.

Now, you might be forgiven for thinking that with so much dividing us, India was bound to fall apart on one or several of these cleavages. But in fact it hasn't, and it's belied every doomsayer who's predicted its imminent disintegration. The main reason for that is the other thing I said the communists were wrong about. It was that they also underestimated the resilience of Indian democracy, which gave everyone, however underprivileged or disaffected, a chance to pursue his or her hopes and ambitions within the common system. In Tamil Nadu in the South, in Mizoram in the Northeast, yesterday's secessionists are today's chief ministers. Agitations in defense of specific languages or specific tribal groups? No problem, deal with them by creative federalism: give the agitators their own units to rule within the federal Indian state. Naxalites chopping off the heads of landlords in Bengal? No problem, encourage the commies to go to the polls instead, and today the pro-Chinese Communist party celebrates a dozen years in power in Bengal. The untouchables want to undo three thousand years of discrimination? Fine, give them the world's first and farthest-reaching affirmative action program, guaranteeing not just opportunities but outcomes — with reserved places in universities, quotas for government jobs, and even eighty-five seats in Parliament. The Muslims feel like a threatened minority? Tsk tsk, allow them their own Personal Law, do not interfere in any way with their social customs, however retrograde they may be, and even have the state organize and subsidize an annual Haj pilgrimage to Mecca.

Do I make it sound too easy? Believe me, it isn't. Skulls have been broken over each of these issues. But the basic principle is simple indeed. Let everyone feel they are as much Indian as everyone else: that's the secret. Ensure that democracy protects the multiple identities of Indians, so that people feel you can be a good Muslim and a good Bihari and a good Indian all at once.

It's worked, Priscilla. We have given passports to a dream, a dream of an extraordinary, polyglot, polychrome, polyconfessional country. Democracy will solve the problems we're having with some disaffected Sikhs in Punjab; and democracy, more of it, is the only answer for the frustrations of India's Muslims too.

But who, in all of this, allowed for militant Hinduism to arise, challenging the very basis of the Indianness I've just described to you?

 

from Priscilla Hart's scrapbook

February 14, 1989

The car stopped where the road ended, at a rusting gate with a sign forbidding entry to unauthorized visitors. The driver took a long stainless steel flashlight out of his glove compartment and got out to open the gate. It creaked painfully. Ahead, there was an overgrown path heading toward the river.

“It's okay,” Lakshman told the driver. “You wait at the car. We'll be back soon. Give me the torch.” The driver looked relieved, even though Lakshman took the flashlight from him, leaving him alone amid the lengthening shadows.

“He'll probably sleep until we get back,” Lakshman assured me cheerfully.

“Tell me more about this place,” I said. “Did you say Koti?”

“Kotli,” Lakshman replied. “No one quite knows where the term comes from. A ‘kot' is a stronghold, a castle; a ‘kothi' is a mansion. This wonderful old heap we are about to visit is something in between. People have been calling it the Kotli for generations. It's been a ruin for somewhat longer than anything else that's standing in the Zalilgarh area.”

“How old is it?”

“Who knows?” he replied disarmingly. “Some say it goes back to the fifteenth or sixteenth century, and there's probably an Archaeological Survey of India finding that confirms that, though I haven't seen it. But it's old, all right. And deserted.”

“Why is it all closed up? Shouldn't you open it for tourists to visit?” I asked.

“Tourists?” Lakshman laughed. “Tourists? In Zalilgarh? My dear girl, I don't think we've had a tourist here since 1543, when Sher Shah Suri camped here while building the Grand Trunk Road. Why would a tourist come to Zalilgarh? Even you don't qualify as one.” Suddenly his hand was on my upper arm again. “Watch your step here — there's a lot of rubble on this path. I don't want you twisting an ankle.”

But he released his grip almost instantly as we walked on.

“What happened was that the Kotli sat here undisturbed for generations, like so many ruins elsewhere in India,” Lakshman explained. “The land from here to the river belonged to the old nawab and then to the government, so nobody could build here, and nobody wanted to, either. It's quite an isolated place, far away from the town, near nothing. Plus there was a rumor that it was haunted.” “Haunted?”

“The story goes that the owner of the Kotli was murdered in his bed by his wife and her lover. But he never let them enjoy the fruits of their villainy. He haunted the house, wailing and shrieking and gnashing his teeth, until he had driven them away in terror. No one would live there after that, so it just fell into disuse.”

“Do people still think it's haunted?”

“In India, myths and legends are very slow to die, Priscilla.” “Unlike the human beings,” I found myself saying. I was just trying to be clever, in keeping with his mood, but as soon as I said it I wished I hadn't.

“Unlike the human beings,” he repeated slowly. “Now why would you say a thing like that, Priscilla? Have you seen so much of death and dying here? I'd like to think Zalilgarh has been a pretty peaceful place in recent years. Haven't had so much as a riot since I've been here. And our infant mortality rates are dropping too.”

“I know,” I said. “I'm sorry. It was a foolish thing to say.”

“No, not foolish,” Lakshman said gently. “We've seen more unnecessary deaths and suffering in my country than I can bear to recall. It's just that things do get better, you know. And in this respect, they have.”

We walked on in silence for a couple of minutes. Then, silhouetted against the dramatic evening sky — a blue-black canvas splashed with the angry saffron of the setting sun — I saw the Kotli.

It was a ruin, all right, but it stood strong and solid, its stone rectangular shape a striking contrast to the suppler lines of the foliageladen trees, the forlorn weeds, the flowing river beyond it. In the evening light it seemed to rise from the earth like a fist.

“Come inside,” Lakshman said, switching on his flashlight.

I picked my way over the rubble-strewn approach and, predictably, tripped, falling heavily against him. He turned quickly to hold me, but only for as long as it took to steady me. And then, as he turned again toward the Kotli, he slipped his free hand into mine.

“Come with me,” he said unnecessarily, that voice of his huskier now, a voice like mulled wine.

I felt the pressure of his hand in mine. It was a soft hand, a hand that had never wielded any instrument harder than a pen; unlike the other male hands I had held, it had never mowed a lawn, washed a dish, carried a pigskin over the touchdown line. It was the hand of a child of privilege in a land where privilege meant there were always other hands to do the heavy lifting, the rough work, for you. And yet in its softness there was a certain strength, something that conveyed reassurance, and I clung on to that hand, grateful that in the gathering gloom its owner could not see the color rising to my cheek.

We stepped into the Kotli. There was no floor left, only grass and pebbles where once thick carpets, perhaps, had covered the stone tiling. But Lakshman's flashlight danced across the walls and ceilings, illuminating them for me. “Look,” he breathed, and I followed the torch beam to a patch of marble that still clung to the stone, the fading lines of an artist's decorative flourish visible across its surface. The flashlight traced the vaulting lines of a nave, then moved to a delicate pattern in the stone above a paneless window, then settled on a niche where a long-ago resident might once have placed his oil lamp.

“It's marvelous,” I said.

“Come upstairs,” Lakshman said urgently. “Before the sunset disappears entirely.”

He pulled me to the stairs, his hand insistent in mine. Part of the roof had long since disappeared, and much of the upper floor was a long open space, ending in a half-wall, like a battlement. I began to walk toward it, intending to stand at the edge, the breeze in my hair, and watch the sun set over the river. But Lakshman pulled me back.

“No,” he said. “There's a better place.”

He walked to the right of the roof floor, the beam of his flashlight dancing, until it caught the dull glint of a padlock. This was attached to a bolted wooden door, clearly a later addition to the premises.

“Only the district magistrate has the key.” Lakshman laughed, gaily pulling a bunch from his pocket. He turned the key, extracted the lock, and pulled back the screeching bolt. “Follow me,” he said, and pushed the door open.

We stepped into a little room, no larger than a vestry. To the left was a rectangular opening in the wall, a window of sorts, through which the river and the sky were visible, framed as in a painting.

“Come and sit here,” Lakshman said.

I sat gingerly where he indicated, on a raised stone slab in an alcove where perhaps a bed had once lain. Lakshman sat beside me, crossing his legs contentedly. There was an expression on his face I hadn't seen before, one of barely suppressed excitement.

Anticipation suffused his breathing. “Look,” he said, pointing with his flashlight, and then switching it off.

I looked, and felt my blood tingle. Directly across from us a mirror had been hung on the wall. It was pitted black with age in places, but it still served, a silvery glint upon the stone. When Lakshman's beam of light went off, the scene filtering in through the rectangular window was reflected brilliantly in the mirror.

“Now you can watch your first stereo sunset,” Lakshman said.

I could not say a word; all sound would have caught in my throat.

I looked out through the rectangular window and watched the saffron spread like a stain across the darkening sky, then turned my eyes and saw the colors incandesce in the mirror. Outside the air was thick with the scent of gulmohur and bougainvillea, which seeped in through the opening to mingle with the warmth of Lakshman by my side, his breathing now calm and even, his teeth flashing white beneath a happy smile.