I sit in an auditorium trying to enjoy a fascinating duet of well-known sarod players of India.
But I am distracted from these dulcet notes as the relentless stream of news on my WhatsApp informs me that the death toll in northeast Delhi has reached 27. The accompanying photos are terrifying.
Try as I might, I find it impossible to enjoy the music. My thoughts keep drifting to the violence engulfing the much beloved, but also notorious, city where I spent my formative years.
I can’t seem to decide which is the real India.
Is it the one I inhabit at this moment, where two Muslim musicians and their renowned father – wearing only their talent on their sleeves – enthrall a predominantly Hindu audience at a government-funded arts centre?
Or is it the one, far away in northeast Delhi, where mobs have unleashed a grotesque dance of death, as they kill, shoot, lynch and burn, driven by a senseless hatred towards another religious group?
The violence in Delhi has ripped open many wounds.
In 1992, communal riots first came to my doorstep. I don’t remember the actual events, the gravity escaping my nine-year old self, except that one vivid memory of my mother shedding silent tears as we watched the demolition of the Babri Masjid on Doordarshan. The sight of a parent crying is never easy for any child, rocking every notion of security she or he has known.
The next memory is when a Hindu landlady asked us to vacate our rented house. She assured us that she didn’t have any problem with us but said that she won’t be able to protect us in case “something happens in our area”.
Thus, we hurriedly moved from our posh South Delhi locality (where we were the only Muslim family within a kilometre’s radius) to a supposedly safer ghetto in Okhla, a Muslim majority area.
My father – who always insisted we get out of our razaais to stand for the national anthem when it was played on TV on the Republic Day, who always espoused the idea peace-building and integration – was forced to compromise on his ideals of national unity for his family’s safety.
Gujarat, in 2002, was another watershed that rocked my spirits as a 19-year-old. Unable to process the brutality of Godhra and its aftermath, I became an escapist, refusing to read any news.
The news, however, did reach me eventually and it took many years of healing to get over it.
Also read: How Hate Spread Its Wings in Delhi: Why February 25 Will Haunt Me Forever
We all survived, and came out of it, with a little more insight into how hate can be manufactured and employed towards a deadly end. We understood how a state can turn against its own citizens and how those in power can destroy a semblance of peace – that took decades to build – in only three days.
I have lived the last 18 years clinging to the belief that our nation has abandoned this sinister project of communal strife (easier done in South India, of which I am an inhabitant now) and has moved on to better things.
After living through the riots of 1992 and 2002, I have become complacent, hopeful even, that India has surpassed its history of communal riots, at least major ones. That our bid to be a global superpower and pursuit of economic growth will allow us to move past the blot of communal strife. That we will never again have to witness the horrors that have marred the unity in diversity narrative of our fractious nation.
There, indeed, was a heightened sense of fear when the current dispensation came to power in 2014. But the ruling party seemed committed to the sabka saath sabka vikas narrative, as we moved towards a relatively positive and peaceful first term. One believed that they had left communal politics behind, content with selling bits of our country to their crony capitalist friends.
However, Delhi today has shaken us all out of that comfort zone, reminding us once again how precarious our society is.
How easily insidious politicians stoke fear and resentment, capitalising on the anger of the frustrated, jobless youth, created by their own flawed economic policies. How two communities, united by the same miserable living conditions and lack of basic amenities, can still be divided on communal lines? How can the two communities defend identities that they were born with and did not consciously choose?
This reminds us that violence lurks right around the corner, under our noses, behind jumlas on national integration, poised to wreak havoc in our cities, our communities, localities, in our minds and consciousness. The demon of communal hatred rises, like a phoenix, growing stronger as it is fed on a steady diet of othering, hate speech, identity politics and fake news.
One realises that this demon had never really gone away. It has been right here amongst us, alive and thriving, and is now back to haunt another generation of children who will witness blood, gore and brutality and live with its trauma for many years to come. They will be left with a legacy of violence that will be hard to shake off an they’ll grow up with a sectarian mindset, thinking in terms of ‘us’ and ‘them’.
The concert ends with a thunderclap of an ovation for the artists on stage.
I walk out hoping against hope that this is the real India.
Shazia Andaleeb is a freelance writer
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