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.
RD: When you say “communal,” you mean—
VL: Hindu-Muslim. At that time, Zalilgarh suffered a Hindu-Muslim clash even though in much of the country Hindus and Muslims were united in a joint campaign, the Khilafat agitation against the British. These clashes have been repeated with frightening regularity over the following decades.
RD: What causes these communal clashes?
VL: Oh, many things. The issues are mostly local, such as attacks on religious processions, desecration of shrines, illicit relationships between men and women of different communities, and so on. The two communities live separately but near each other in crowded shantytowns or bastis, and any small spark could set ablaze a bloody confrontation. Each skirmish would leave behind its own fresh trail of hostility and suspicion, which offered fertile ground for the next clash.
RD: Knowing all this, wasn’t there anything you could do to prevent what happened? You and the police?
VL: I’ve asked myself a thousand times if I could have done more than I did. Guru — Gurinder — too. You know the superintendent of police?
RD: Gurinder Singh. I’m interviewing him next. A friend of yours, I believe?
VL: Yes. We were at college together. St. Stephen’s, in Delhi, a couple of years apart. I didn’t know him well there, but we’ve become very good friends here. A tremendous officer. But such an unlikely cop.
RD: Why?
VL: Oh, he studied history in college, you know. Played hockey and played hookey. Drank a lot, even then. Was known for cracking bad jokes. They called him “the Ab Surd” — Sikhs are “Surds,” you see, short for “Sardarji,” which is an honorific for them — oh forget it, like most cross-cultural jokes, it’s just too complicated to explain. Anyway, he’s absurd when he wants to be, especially with a glass in his hand — make that a bottle. And he swears a lot. As I fear you’ll find out. “The story of my life,” he says, “begins with the words, ’Once a pun a time.’” Today he’d probably say “a fucking time,” so be prepared. He took the IAS exams, as so many of us did at St. Stephen’s, largely to please his parents. He really wanted to be a farmer — a peasant, he said, but secretly his ambition was to be a big commercial farmer, mechanized agriculture, tractors, irrigation canals, the lot. Simple pleasures, as Wilde said, are the last refuge of the complex. So he didn’t try hard enough in the exams. Couldn’t get into the Administrative Service, but made it to the police service. He hoped his parents would credit him for the effort and let him go off and work for his grandfather, who had the land but still tilled it the old-fashioned way. But they were horrified at the prospect. The police, they said, was hardly a great career, but it was better than farming. What sort of status would they have in society if their son were a mere flogger of bullocks? It was one thing if he’d failed the exams altogether, but here he had the chance for a real job, with real power. They weren’t going to let him waste his life farming. How much money could a farmer make anyway? He gave in. [Pause.] We all do. [Pause.] I wanted to be a writer. My parents had other ideas.
RD: In America, parents have stopped trying to tell their kids what to do in life.
VL: It’ll be a long while before we get to be like America.
RD: I’ll say. So you were telling me about Zalilgarh. The demographics. The background. Whether there was anything more you could have done to prevent what happened.
VL: Whether we could have done anything more? I honestly don’t think so. We did everything. It started the same way, you know, in Zalilgarh as elsewhere. The pattern was the same — daily belligerent processions and slogans of hate. Gurinder and I responded by the book, doing everything we’d been taught to do in such situations — calling meetings of the two communities, advising restraint, registering strong criminal charges against the more rabid processionists, energizing the peace committees, preventive arrests and so on.
RD: Peace committees?
VL: It’s something we set up pretty much everywhere where we have a history of communal trouble. Committees bringing together leaders of both communities to work together, sort out their problems. We used every mechanism we had, every trick we knew. These measures might have been enough in normal times.
RD: But these weren’t normal times?
VL: No, these weren’t normal times. As the Ram Sila Poojan campaign gathered momentum, there was nothing we could do to ebb the raging flood of communal hatred.
RD: Sorry, I just need to change the tape here.
from Lakshman’s journal
March 26, 1989
“I suppose I never forgave my father,” she said somberly. “Just seeing him — doing it, doing that, with that awful woman from his office. I was barely fifteen, and I felt personally hurt, as if it was me he’d betrayed, and not my mother. He tried to talk to me, to explain, even to beg forgiveness, though he was too proud a man to use the word. I’ll never forget the contempt with which, in my fifteen-year-old superiority, spouting some Freudian wisdom I’d picked up God knows where, I told him witheringly, ‘You’re pathetic, Dad. Don’t you realize you were just trying to make up for not being able to penetrate the Indian market?’?
&n
bsp; She laughed, quietly, at the recollection of her own words. “I was known in the family as precocious Priscilla,” she said. “Dad was particularly fond of the phrase. He stopped using it after I said that.”
I stroked her hair, then kissed her tenderly on the cheek. “Precious Priscilla,” I said.
“Oh, I prefer that,” she replied, kissing me quickly on the lips. But then she turned serious again.
“I was very upset about what happened,” she went on. “It sort of crystallized a whole lot of half-formed feelings I’d developed about my father. What was he doing in India, after all? Trying to sell Coke. For God’s sake, it’s not as if he was bringing in medicines, or new technology, or clean drinking water, or electrification. It was Coke, for crying out loud.”
“Indians do drink Coke, sweetheart.”
“Well, some Indians do. But it hardly struck me as a noble endeavor. You know, in school there were the kids of diplomats, but there were also the kids of missionaries working in the tribal districts, others whose fathers were in India to construct dams or power stations or even an underground railway — useful things, necessary things. How I used to wish my dad was doing something like that, and not just selling Coke.” She shook her head, and her hair fell across her eyes, a curtain across her regret. I gently pushed it aside as she went on. “The irony is that these other kids actually envied me. ‘Your Dad works for Coke? Coo-oool.’ You know the kind of thing. They thought their parents’ professions were boring, while my dad was glamorous because he sold a product they all knew and valued. Strange, huh?”
I nodded, not wanting to contradict her.
“And then when he didn’t do so well, and the government threw Coke out, and he was reduced to spending his time trying to explore schemes to get it back into the Indian market, I began to feel really conflicted about him, you know? On the one hand a part of me thought of him as a bit pathetic, and on the other I was kinda glad he was doing it because this meant we could stay on in India, and I loved India. For years I’d worshipped him, you know, the perfect father figure, tall and strong and handsome, with an easy laugh and a habit of throwing me up in the air when I was a little girl and catching me before I fell. And then I got too big to be thrown in the air, and too wise to see perfection in him, and too intelligent not to question what he was doing. Am I boring you?”