Who killed Kader Mia ?

In the last chapter (‘Freedom to think’) of his book ‘ Identity and violence’, Amartya Sen dwelt on his personal experience as an eleven year old child in Dhaka (at the time part of the undivided India) of a nasty act of communal violence during the Hindu-Muslim riots of late nineteen forties. Kader Mia, a Muslim day labourer, happened on that day to stray into a predominantly Hindu neighbourhood of the city (where Sen’s family lived at the time) in search of work for a tiny wage to provide for his impoverished family. Hindu thugs, who did not, in all likelihood, even know him nor met him before, knifed him simply because of his religious identity.  

While expressing his bewilderment even sixty years after this incident Sen correctly rationalised it within his conceptual framework of the solitarist view of an individual’s identity – in this case the identity of Kader Mia just as a Muslim. Those who engineered his death, including those who actually executed the action, did not stop to consider his other obvious identity as one belonging to the working class (proletariat), as a poor daily wage earning odd-job workman (having to face, probably, much the same economic hardships as some among the mob of killers) or as a fellow Bengali-speaking countryman sharing the same cultural practices of the rural Bengal, a good normal human being who cared for his family.

What perplexed Sen the most, and justifiably so, is why and how “political instigators who urged the killing … managed to persuade many otherwise peaceable people of both communities to turn into dedicated thugs … made to think of themselves only as Hindus or only as Muslims (who must unleash vengeance on ‘the other community’) and as absolutely nothing else : not Indians, not sub-continentals, not Asians, not members of  shared human race” (Sen, Identity and Violence, Allen Lane, 2006, p 172). Continuing in this vein Sen made an inspired guess about who could be participating in this macabre dance of death. Though a large number of ordinary people were entrapped by the demagoguery of those preaching identity politics it is the savage fringe “often at the troubled ends of each community who were induced to kill ‘the enemies who kill us’”.

But this is the closest Sen had come to analyzing the art of fostering communal violence. In the end he came back to effectively restating his two formal propositions made in this book (see my earlier blog “Roots of communal violence – solitarist view of identity”) and rested his case. However, it is clear from above that Sen was looking for not just a formal answer to his question as to why, if violence is not the norm with an average human being but only an aberration, it has always been relatively easy for the architects of carnages and pogroms to successfully bring out the beast in men.

I suspect a rationale for ethno-communal violence may not be found in a purely rational, however confused or obdurately narrow and one-sided, view of identity that has presented the intellectual armor Sen had assiduously tried to demolish in this monograph. There is an irrational side to our mind that probably carries layers of unresolved existential insecurities men have accumulated over centuries, imbibed under hostile environment of fierce competition among racially or ethnically identifiable groups or communities. In this scenario sense of belonging and bonding among the communally homogeneous is valued and the perceived ‘otherness’ of any entity that is exogenous by way of food habits, dresses, look, conduct of daily life activities, is a potential threat and hence the subject of a deep-seated antipathy. In the modern world the perspective for above black and white distinction (singular identity) may present itself in a more ambiguous manner but is still socially perpetuated by uncritical consumption through the family values, religious practices, folklore and wider cultural behaviour patterns.

The alchemists of the partition violence in Bengal (politicians, businessmen and other vested interests and finally, the ‘troubled ends’ of the community, the criminals, lumpen elements) first engineered strategic provocative acts of desecration (of symbols and places of mass reverence), arson, rape and murder, spreading exaggerated lies and tendentious rumours about the same events. In this atmosphere of purported hostility by ‘others’ (sporting a specific selected religious identity and painted as the ‘enemies who kill us’) Kader Mia’s killers, despite sharing with him plural identities as noted earlier could be manipulated to a confused and raging state of mind whereupon they lost their ‘freedom to think’ and reacted from an instinctive fear and hatred of the ‘other’ (as a mere Muslim man) rather than reason. This reminds me of the inherent irrationality of men in the context of the partition riots to which Saadat Hasan Manto hinted (see my earlier blog “Communal riots : The heart of darkness”). In that blog  it was noted that the similarity of certain aspects of the current ethno-communal violence in Bodoland, Assam (July 2012 onward) with the partition riots was uncanny.  

Roots of communal violence – solitarist view of identity

In his book ‘Identity and violence’, Amartya Sen has argued, I think more or less convincingly, that world over there is a growing retrograde tendency to take a deliberately restricted view of a human being’s obvious and naturally occurring spectrum of associations, loyalties or identities and choose to tag him or her with a particular identity, say a racial or religious or even a so-called civilisational one (a la’ Samuel Huntington). He has also argued that a natural corollary of ‘boxing’ an individual to an exclusive identity, such as belonging to a religious or a racial community, is the potential for communal or racial violence.

The arguments for the first proposition, remaining largely at an abstract schematic level, perhaps sound believable. There appears to be no dearth of empirical evidence from the umpteen carnages in India and the world in the last century (just think of post Babri Masjid riots and especially the 2002 Gujarat pogrom in the recent memory, massacre of Sikhs in 1984, periodic and serial bloodbath in Assam through the last quarters of that century, not to forget the latest one during July this year) that stand testimony to the tremendous persuasive power of the identity politics leading people to violence. Hence his second proposition also seems to acquire an indirect validation.

But whether a solitarist view of the identity by itself should invariably or always presage violence may require careful re-look at the empirical evidence gleaned from more elaborate or detailed analysis of sequence of events as a prelude to several large-scale communal or racial violence in different parts of the world than was possible in this book. This kind of conceptual moorings could possibly be a necessary but not a sufficient condition for much of the violence. The point is that race, religion, ethnicity, language may appeal, sometimes quite strongly, to any or all of us as an abstract idea of identity, but as Sen has argued, we have several other associations or loyalties as well, simultaneously, at any given time. Why and how some of us come to be persuaded to choose to be designated with one of these singular identities, for all practical purposes, in exclusion to any of our other loyalties and in an apparent disregard for the commitments or duties that those other identities might enjoin us to do or not do, may not have a simple causality as Sen’s book might tend to suggest.        

At various points within the book Sen happened to mention the savage Hindu-Muslim riot during the first partition of the Indian subcontinent during 1947 and held this event as a sad, perhaps avoidable, example of the fall out of the confusion created among the people belonging to both religions about the primacy of their religious identity. The final chapter of the book (“Freedom to think”) begins with a poignant personal anecdote from Sen’s childhood days where he became exposed to a brutal murder happening under communal passion during the partition riot apparently close to his house in Dhaka where he lived with his father who taught at the Dhaka University. I will have more to say about Sen’s description and comments about this incident in relation to his second proposition. Suffice it to record here that it is in these final pages of the book we notice Sen’s sincere but unsuccessful struggle to find a rationale to the raw communal violence, that he witnessed as a child and which he possibly never could forget, in terms of a virulent brand of identity politics. This was as far as he went in constructing a theory of communal riots – a conceptual basis was provided. But it still begged the question : how was it successfully engineered on such a large scale ?  

Reflection on a movement

There were probably many deficiencies of the Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, which has all but petered out recently partly, at least, due to its own contradictions. There were a lot of criticisms from the political class, hard boiled journalists and newspaper editors against the impossibility and even danger (to Indian democracy) associated with the utopian dream of the movement daring to suggest that the men in the street can take more than a passing interest in the formulation and effective passage of a key legislation affecting their daily life.

It was no mean achievement that despite all this and more gripes about the arrogance and the self-righteousness of the leaders the spirit of the movement struck a sympathetic chord with a large number of people without any regimented or forcible mobilization by political parties. People’s participation was by and large spontaneous and quite unprecedented, like of which we probably have not seen in recent times. The clearest indication of the mass participation is the almost nervous attempt (though mainly devious) of the government last year (April-August) in engaging with the team Anna and negotiating their demands in contrast with the calculated way that the same government cold-shouldered the movement and those spearheading it this August. 

Popular movements sometimes happen when there is an apparent emotional consensus among wide categories of people about the existence of a significant social/political malady from which people desire deliverance and there is no easy resolution within the conventional socio-political framework. And in this context an individual or a group that appears to hold public’s attention is widely believed to be different and outside this framework, morally superior, with a genius for understanding and articulating people’s genuine expectations and also capable of bringing about a change in the said framework to meet these demands.

Rampant and endemic corruption in our body politic is indeed such an issue of wide and genuine public concern. Current political system is apparently not willing or able to root out this menace despite a lot of protestations to the contrary. Anna and his team were seen as rank outsiders and were largely fresh, uncorrupt and seized with a novel idea of a lokpal (as an upholder of the ethical conduct of the public institutions) that would stand astride the present system and clean it. However, the group’s organizational strength and cohesiveness, the leadership’s clarity of vision and the ability to evolve a sustainable plan for campaign making practical adaptations, dynamically forming new and wider alliances with other popular movements (at least not alienating some of them) fell far short of expectation of supporters and sympathizers with the movement tapering out to a tame end.

From this example it will be apparent that creation of a valid moral apposite, though difficult, may have been possible to a large extent. But the hardheaded capability to sustain the moral vision through the vicissitudes of a long drawn movement, has not yet been in evidence. Thus the movement with all its early momentum had failed the reality check.     

Communal riots : The heart of darkness

In a dispatch entitled ‘Mountain of mistrust between communities’ (Times of India, September 4, 2012) the correspondent Naresh Mitra quoted two displaced persons staying in two different relief camps in the Kokrajhar district of Assam, Basanti Narzary, a Bodo woman from Shimultapu, and Anuwar Hussain Juardar, a Muslim man from Dawaguri, that brought out a strikingly parallel predicament for both the communities.  Basanty was quoted as saying “Our neighbours are all muslims and we had very good relations with them prior to the clashes. We used to sell our agricultural produce in the same market and frequently interacted with each other. I don’t know how all this happened and what kind of relation we will share once we are rehabilitated in our village”. Contrast this statement with what Anuwar conveyed : “Beore the clashes, Bodos and Muslim farmers worked together in paddy fields. Even I worked for many of my Bodo neighbours. One of the closest Bodo persons to me was Anil Boro. I don’t know whether Anil Boro will be the same person once we come back to our houses at Dawaguri ”. In an ironic coincidence Anuwar from Dawaguri was rehabilitated in a relief camp at Shimultapu High School, while Basanty in her relief camp in Jaraguri was wistfully thinking about her house at Shimultapu with spacious rooms, a courtyard, kitchen and garden that was burnt by miscreants on July 23 !    

While many inmates started leaving relief camps in Kokrajhar, Chirang and Dhubri districts, there was this palpable suspicion and worry in the minds of Bodos and Muslims, who have lived peacefully as neighbours before clashes and were also good friends. The ethno-communal clashes have changed everything for them now. 

In his deeply emotional reminiscence on Shyam, his very close and dear friend from the Bombay film world of 1940s, the great Urdu writer Saadat Hasan Manto made an observation on the subject of communal feelings with a remarkable perspicacity (“Shyam : Krishna’s Flute” in “Bitter Fruit”, Penguin Books, 2008).

“Once during the time of Partition”, writes Manto, “when a bloody fratricidal civil war was being fought between Hindus and Muslims with thousands being massacred every day, Shyam and I were listening to a family of Sikh refugees from Rawalpindi. They were telling us horrifying stories of how their people had been killed. I could sense that Shyam was deeply moved and I could understand the emotional upheaval he was undergoing. When we left, I said to him, ‘ I am a Muslim, don’t you feel like murdering me ?’

“ ‘Not now’, he answered gravely, ‘but when I was listening to the atrocities the Muslims had committed … I could have murdered you’.

“I was deeply shocked by Shyam’s words”, Manto continues, “perhaps I could have also murdered him at the time. But later when I thought about it I suddenly understood the basis of those riots in which thousands of innocent Hindus and Muslims were killed every day.

“ ‘Not now … but at that time, yes’. If you ponder over these words, you will find an answer to the painful reality of Partition, an answer that lies in human nature itself.” No wonder many of Manto’s short stories reflected this almost unavoidable perversion of human nature at the critical juncture of partition. The bigger tragedy is that this indulgence has not been held in check, the genie of communal bad blood has repeatedly come out and wreaked havoc time and again in different areas of post-partition India among varied communities and groups.  

Despite being close neighbours and good friends for years, ordinary people belonging to different ethnicity or religion suddenly allow themselves to be incited by rabid communal rumor and hate mongers and start believing in the irreconcilable demonic ‘otherness’ and the evil intent of the community on the opposite side of the divide as an inevitable consequence. Unspeakable cruelty, bestiality happen which both groups could hardly understand or explain later while mending up the badly mangled fabric of their life as a composite community just as Basanty and Anuwar, sitting in the relief camps of Kokrajhar, were hard put to find a clue to the upheaval they experienced a few weeks ago.  

Questioning the nature of Indian democracy

·        Is holding 5 yearly elections the hallmark of our democracy ? The manner in which such elections are conducted (use of money and muscle power, inducements, openly pandering to caste, religious, ethnic, linguistic, regional prejudices are known to vitiate the electoral atmosphere) raises serious doubt whether the election results are manipulated to an extent.

·        Though in principle people can make a free choice in these elections, it is really the political parties that one gets to choose from a list (though given as a list of candidates). The parties nominate candidates by a non-transparent process in which their winability at any cost becomes the major factor in their choice. Their present and future utility to the party takes precedence over the moral character, educational qualifications and background, knowledge, competence and wisdom that the candidates, ideally, could bring to bear on the delivery of public good to the constituents who would elect them.     

·        Assuming that the election provides Indians a means to choose and/or overthrow their rulers in a non-violent manner, they have to perforce agree to be governed for the next five years by a set of ‘chosen’ people, who despite pious protestations, effectively arrogate to themselves the power to set the rules of governance as per their convenience and their perpetual benefit and continuance, and insist that these ‘rules’ are sacrosanct, next to being god-given, and can not be challenged by anybody – people at large or by some other associations, organizations, institutions on their behalf.

·        Once chosen, through a far from satisfactory electoral process, a party or an alliance of parties parading a majority of number of wining candidates (MLAs or MPs) expects an effective immunity from critical scrutiny of the policies persued by the executive (the government) formed by them as well as the details of implementation of even those stated policies. Not only are the protests by the opposition parties as well as dissatisfied members of public and civil society considered undemocratic, but even adverse comments by a constitutionally mandated auditor of the accounts of the government are deemed to contribute to the perils of our democracy. In the same spirit some unfavourable pronouncements and judgments by the highest judicial institution of the country (the supreme court) are deemed hostile and not conducive to independent and efficient operation of the three sets of wheels propelling our democracy. Whoever has talked about the checks and balances being part of democratic functioning must be ignorant of the daily grind of a state machinery !  The question is : should we be proud of such a machine or a little disgusted and even scared at the prospects of having to deal with it on a daily basis ?

Public participation - 1

The recent airing of the Indian television program ‘Satyameva Jayate’ has garnered a lot of public and media attention – a successful Bolywood star taking up current and burning social issues and presenting them in an upfront but sensitive manner deserving accolades from many quarters.

The discerning observers would notice the periodic occurrence of such phenomenal upsurge in genuine public participation and interest with regard to, say, a religious (such as programmes of Ramdev) or a cultural programme (a TV serial like Ramayana or Mahabharata), political event (watershed elections like in 1977 after emergency, Obama’s election as US president in 2008 or the May 2011 election in West Bengal) or popular movements (Egypt’s popular uprising against the dictatorial regime, Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption agitation both happening last year ).

There were probably many deficiencies of the Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption movement, which has all but petered out recently partly, at least, due to its own contradictions. There were a lot of criticisms from the political class, hard boiled journalists and newspaper editors against the impossibility and even danger (to Indian democracy) associated with the utopian dream of the movement daring to suggest that the men in the street can take more than a passing interest in the formulation and effective passage of a key legislation affecting their daily life.

It was no mean achievement that despite all this and more gripes about the arrogance and the self-righteousness of the leaders the spirit of the movement struck a sympathetic chord with a large number of people without any regimented or forcible mobilization by political parties. People’s participation was by and large spontaneous and quite unprecedented, like of which we probably have not seen in recent times. The clearest indication of the mass participation is the almost nervous (though mainly devious) government effort last year (April-August) in engaging with the team Anna and negotiating their demands contrasted with the studious and calculated way that the same government cold-shouldered the movement and those spearheading it this August.  Comparing the evangelical electronic media deluge last year (almost as if they were witnessing and making the viewing public aware of a live piece of history in the making) with the cool, hard-headed and analytical detachment displayed this time around in dissecting the movement’s current flaws, past and in-built weaknesses and raising fundamental questions about the viability of such a movement, one perceives the hard-nosed instinct of the media-moghuls about what would whet the public’s news-appetite. And this provided a good measure of the emotional involvement of the people at large.

While it is another matter that in some of these cases, especially those involving politics and political upheavals, people are eventually assailed by doubts and there are occasions of feeling shortchanged, the spontaneous enthusiasm and the freshness of hope is remarkable for this liberating spirit that shines through the presumed hopelessness and the helplessness of the common people.

The key follow up questions are : (a) what is it that truly galvanizes a people, and secondly (b) why is it generally so difficult to do justice to the expectation of the people ?

Manto stories – 1

Sometime ago finished re-reading a collection of short stories of Saadat Hasan Manto. Apart from some well-known partition stories, there are several other notable ones imbued with the trademark sensibility of Manto. The chaos and confusion (quite often accompanied with utter drunkenness which could be a metaphor for the unhinged time and place), as well as raw emotions surface in many stories where action mostly belonged to the turbulent period 1920-1950. Manto seemed almost like a detached observer of the big social and political transformations and the attendant changes brought on the human beings by poverty, destitution and lawlessness that preceded and accompanied partition. Though his emphathy for the predicament of the lowest among the lowly is unmistakable, nevertheless he characterizes and catalogues layers of depravity and villany to which human beings can descend to (especially under some special conditions like dislocation and uncertainty in the context of the partition) with almost a scientist’s empiricism. He appeared to look at his characters much as a biologist would unemotionally handles his petridishes and the bottles of specimens.

Side by side there are also some amazing stories of immense charm and innocence – especially the stories of apparent sexual awakening in the adolescent and the young adults. His empathy for the down and out, especially women (sex workers or others) in difficult and unenviable conditions (whence conventional morality had come unstuck) is well known, but he does it with a simplicity and sureness of touch that is breathtaking.

His partition stories apart (where much of his fame lay and the cold savage fury that characterizes his writing remains unsurpassed), I found ‘New constitution’, ‘Last salute’, ‘Odour’, ‘The blouse’ and ‘Wild Cactus’ in this collection great reading and were as good as any in the world literature.