I grew up in the Bombay that Salman Rushdie immoralized in his novel “Midnight’s Children.” He and I, a Muslim in hiding and a Hindu in America, share an abiding love for the city of our child hood. It was an oasis of peace, charm and gracious living, where mothers had aft moon tea with children and where politics and violence were kept at bay by a population that prided itself on being cosmopolitan and secular.
Our city’s multiculturalism was evident everywhere in our schools, neighborhoods, bazaars and workplaces, As a teenager, then as a working woman, later as a mother returning from New York with young daughters, I felt safe in Bombay, even on deserted streets late at night. My Bombay visits invariably recharged my batteries, and each time I returned refreshed and ready to take on the streets of New York once again.
Over the past 20 years, I noticed our city changing in small ways. But my family’s home was still the same.
Perched on a hill with a view that stretches over distant suburbs to the horizon, it is an old apartment building (my friends had dubbed it “the aerie”’), secluded from the hustle and bustle of the metropolis, on a shady, tree-lined road where one can still hear wild parrots at dawn. The large walled compound offered endless opportunities for unrestricted play, adventure and friendships for my daughters on vacation.
Now all that has changed drastically as demagogic Hindu nationalist politicians, charging that the Government has turned its back on India’s 730 million Hindus while pandering to its 100 million Muslims, are trying to force it out of power. So far, their effort to mount a massive protest rally in New Delhi has failed.
Religion in India is taken seriously but, periodic eruptions aside; it has been a private affair. Most of us came of age in post-independence India. Our parents subscribed to the secular ideals of Gandhi and Nehru. Our secularism has nor been a denial of religion but a respect for differences. And Bombay, India’s most modernity, enshrined this tradition of tolerance.
That pluralism is being tom asunder now, not by “fundamentalist Hindus” (an oxymoron there is no official Hindu dogma, ne “fun dementias” that Hindus agree on) but by self-servingly callous politicians across India, These opportunists is of every party divide and rule, exploiting the economically disadvantaged of all religions by fanning their fears.
Bombay’s heterogeneous society has thus been sectarianized by chauvinistic party, the Shiv Sena, whose 40,00 activists have built a powerbase in the city, the capital of Maharashtra state, In past years, this pany, campaigning along linguistic lines on a Maharashtra for Maharashtraians platform, had sought (o expel south Indians and other “outsiders” who flock to Bombay in search of jobs.
In a bid for political supremacy in the state, the Shiv Sena has leaped on the countrywide bandwagon of Hindu nationalists, who want India to be a Hindu nation, not a secular state, and who have a program of violence and intimidation intended to expel Muslims.
During the Bombay not, the feuding politicians of the state’s ruling Congress Party were paralyzed by ineptness and intraparty rivalry, and the police force was immobilized by the Shiv Sena’s infiltration of its lower ranks. Thus, the violence could neither be prevented nor stopped.
“Bombay is burning! I can see the fires from the windows,” gasped my sister-in-law when I telephoned on my return to New York last month, everything had been peaceful as usual over the holidays that I had just spent there. Now, I was told, there were Hindu Muslim riots all over the city. A couple of miles away, a slum was singled out for destruction by the Shiv Sena, The entire area was blockaded by angry Hindus. Muslim families were concerned and had 10 climb the arid bill behind their huts that leads steeply to the fool of our compound.
I was stunned “The only living creatures ever to come up that frill and over our wall were the occasional wild peacocks during the monsoon, Now came these furnishes from below the hill toddlers in tow, infants in arms, small suitcases holding their belongings about 100 Muslims, chambering over the short wall onto the lawn. ‘They sped across the compound und left through the front gate as miserably as they came, making their way to the railway station and out of the city, Gone, perhaps forever.
My brother was shaken up. He knew that hill first-hand. As 4 young boy, on a dare, he had tried to go down it but had to come back up, unable to negotiate a firm foothold on that rough terrain. With small children of his own now, he could empathize with these families.
No sooner had these unfortunates left than the Hindu mob followed. Armed with sharp swords, kitchen knives, monkey wrenches, the crowd was as unlikely as Birnam Wood coming to Dunsinane. The police, in collusion with the hooligans, told my brother they would not respond “until three or four are dead.”
Strings were pulled at the highest levels and a police battalion arrived just as the first of the threatening mob approached the wall. After repeated warnings, the officers fired into the mob, killing one and injuring two, the bodies rolled down the hill as the residents and the children of our building gaped in shock.
The mob scattered but I returned later to kidnap the compound’s chief’ security guard “for questioning.” Two days later, he was released, badly beaten. The hoodlums, seeking revenge, wanted to know who had called the police and who had given refuge to a resident’s Muslim employee and his family, I was worried for my brother’s safety.
Our home no longer feels safe. I used to see continuity in my little niece’s living in that even and playing in that garden as J had done, decades before her. Now I am not sure. The police are still standing guard in my brother’s compound, anything could anytime.
What I have lost in my home that quality of life, that degree of Security, that easy camaraderie that cut across religious lines. That loss is irreparable.
New York Times
Article extracted from this publication >> June 24, 1994
