When Ram became a battering ram

It was not uncommon in the 1920s and 1930s for communal riots to start with just the kind of provocation evident in the Lok Sabha when members took the oath

The past is creeping in on us. Hindu-Muslim conflict followed a certain pattern in the bad old days when the uncouth British still ruled India. This week’s proceedings in the Lok Sabha when members took the oath showed that shaking off what Narendra Modi deplored as “1,200 years of slave mentality”, undying India is springing back to proud manhood, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) style.

A TV panellist claimed the other evening that in her innocence, poor little Pragya Singh Thakur, added the august name of her guru to her own because she didn’t know better. Perhaps the saffron-swathed, bead-festooned, tilak-marked terror-accused really hadn’t been advised of the form, but this can hardly be said of the other causes of tumult at what should have been a solemn ceremony. The chants of Vande Mataram and Jai Sri Ram, Har Har Mahadev and Bharat Mata ki Jai that erupted as a bearded Asaduddin Owaisi of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen walked in his skull cap to the well of the house to take his oath could have been battle cries from some medieval field of religious conflict.

It was not uncommon in the 1920s and 1930s for communal riots to start with just this kind of provocation, at least in undivided Bengal. A Hindu procession from the temple would wind its way to the clash of cymbals and beat of drums past a mosque where the faithful were at their prayers. Or elaborate tazias, representing the tombs of Hasan and Hussain, grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad, would be carried in procession past a prominent temple. Both sides sometimes refined on their provocations. The Hindu procession might be organised during the Muslims’ Friday prayers. The tazia could be too tall to pass without lopping off a branch or two of a tree that Hindus regarded as sacred. The most offensive weapon in the armoury of communal hostility was to leave some part of a dead pig or cow outside a mosque or temple.

Shades of that past lived again as those who are supposed to uphold what they proudly boast is the world’s largest democracy heckled and intimidated colleagues of a different political or religious persuasion. The jeering and taunting of Opposition members wasn’t merely a breach of parliamentary propriety. Unruly members were mocking the very idea of an inclusive India while the pro-tem speaker, Virendra Kumar, looked on. 

Watching the disgraceful exhibition on TV, I felt Owaisi handled the situation well. His retaliatory “Jai Bhim” honoured the author of the Constitution, B R Ambedkar, while his “Allah ho Akbar”, God is Great, was a stern reminder that no matter how many ghar wapsis are forced on timid or vulnerable Indians, no Muslim worth his salt denies his faith. It was also noticeable that while the Samajwadi Party’s Shafiqur Rahman Barq responded to chants of “Jai Sri Ram” with “Constitution zindabad”, his Samajwadi Party colleague, ST Hasan, preferred “Hindustan zindabad.”

Muslims alone were not barracked. Sonia Gandhi must have resented it bitterly when saffron stalwarts patronisingly thanked her for taking the oath in Hindi. Almost every Trinamool Congress representative from West Bengal also faced taunting slogans, as did some Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam parliamentarians from Tamil Nadu. It was clear the BJP has appropriated Ram as the party’s own victory symbol, to be used as a battering ram against opponents.

The entire boorish upsurge scene reminded me of a conversation some 60 years ago with the writer, Nirad C Chaudhuri. Taking me out on the balcony of his Kashmere Gate flat he pointed to a vacant plot opposite where there were a few shacks and some people pottering about. Asked to define the scene, I replied it was a temporary building site. I was wrong, Chaudhuri retorted triumphantly. It wasn’t temporary. It was permanent. It was Hindu India coming back into its own.

The analogy he painted was of a heavy metal piston that India’s British rulers had dragged out and somehow held in place with their brute strength. They had gone, and we were trying desperately to cling on to the piston. But we didn’t have the strength. There was no hook or handle to which it could be attached. Our weak muscles were already aching with the pain of the effort. They would fail one day, and the piston ram home with a resoundingly destructive clang. It wasn’t until nearly 30 years later that I realised he had been outlining the theme of his magnum opus which takes its inspiration from Pope’s “Thy hand, great Anarch! lets the curtain fall/And Universal Darkness buries All.”

It’s just as well the old man was spared the distressing spectacle of the 17th Lok Sabha screaming its fulfilment of his grim prophecy.