Rana Dasgupta - Capital - The Eruption of Delhi

… during these disorders large numbers of women have been abducted on either side and there have been forcible conversions on a large scale. No civilized people can recognize such conversions and there is nothing more heinous than abduction of women. Every effort, therefore, must be made to restore women to their original homes, with the co-operation of the Governments concerned. 26

Thousands of women were located and transported to their parental families in the ensuing process, which involved large-scale investigations on both sides. What it did not take account of, however, was the wishes of the women themselves, many of whom did not want to be removed. In many cases, after all, years had gone by, and life had moved on. When the agents of the state came to uproot them, they often said they were content with their new religion, they were happy with their new husbands, they now had children, they did not want to lose everything again — but they were carted over the border anyway. This despite the real terror that returning ‘home’ inspired in many of these women. As social workers reported to the government from their interactions with abducted women:

Sir, we the social workers who are closely associated with the work are confronted with many questions when we approach a woman. The women say, ‘You have come to save us; you say you have come to take us back to our relatives. You tell us that our relatives are eagerly waiting to receive us. You do not know our society. It is hell. They will kill us. Therefore, do not send us back.’ 27

These women were entirely justified in their fears. Among Hindu families, in the stories that people told of Partition horrors, ‘pure’ women had jumped into wells rather than allow Muslims to dishonour them — they had, like Sita, allowed the earth to swallow them up, and demonstrated their virtue with their death. That was the way the epic was supposed to end. These women who sought a place back in their own families after years in the demon’s palace caused immense consternation. Many of these women had experienced the love of Muslim men — whose sexual potency appeared, in Hindu nightmares, demonic — and there was no way to recognise them anymore as legitimate Hindu women. They were worse than dead: they were alive, and they presented to their fathers, brothers and husbands an unbearable reminder of their own masculine failure. While some remained as outcasts, many more were turned away and some were indeed murdered. Nearly all were cut out of memory. Countless numbers of women from that time disappeared from family stories: children grew up with fleeting impressions of aunts and older sisters who were never seen or spoken of again.

The sense of historical castration did not disappear from north Indian society. Quite the opposite. One of the first rules that people who moved to Delhi learned was that you did not insult a man in public, or remind him of his shortcomings, for the consequences could be improbably severe. Almost every week someone died in the city because they confronted a man about his bad driving, or his loud behaviour, or his lewd remarks to a woman. As the Hindustan Times commented at the beginning of 2010, looking back at the murders of the previous year:

A man murdered his neighbour for kicking his dog at Ranhola village in Outer Delhi. Another was killed for breaking the queue at a public toilet in Civil Lines, north Delhi. New Friends Colony in south Delhi witnessed murder when a man refused to let another make a call from his cell phone.

The Delhi Police registered 523 cases of murder last year against 528 in 2008. Of these, 15 per cent were due to ‘sudden provocation’, legalese for Delhi’s infamous bad temper, while 17 per cent were passion-related. Only 16 per cent were committed with criminal intent.

“Last year saw some of the most bizarre murders as far as motive was concerned,” Y.S. Dadwal, commissioner of police, said at the Annual Police Conference on January 2.

Psychiatrists believe lack of a proper outlet for anger, as well as the absence of basic information on anger management is to blame. “Many things — from machismo to impulsiveness, part of every metro’s culture — are behind such cases,” said Dr Rajesh Sagar, senior psychiatrist, AIIMS.

“People in the city are changing with it. They are finding it difficult to control emotion,” said Dr Rajat Mitra of the NGO Swanchetan, which works with the Delhi Police. 28

The capital was defined, increasingly, by a hyper-aggressive masculinity, which seemed to lose all constraint in the years after 1991. Who are you to tell me what to do ? was what a man shouted as he hit another in the face: because with this age of global markets came an end to all limits on behaviour, and now no one, least of all a stranger, could tell you what to do. People used the word ‘slave’ a lot to describe the history that was no more: “We have been slaves for too long; now no one can order us around.” Delhi, where a rising breed of politician — businessman embodied most perfectly this new Indian brawn, became the stage for a new, psychotic model of manhood which jettisoned all social and even legal constraint in its concern for phallic prestige. The stories which dominated the city pages of the newspapers either side of the year 2000 concerned scions of powerful families who seemed to feel that the principal benefit that came with their social position was the free expression of furious masculine power. In 1999, for instance, Manu Sharma, son of a Congress member of parliament whose political position had helped him assemble a multibillion dollar empire of hotels, entertainment, sugar mills and agriculture, shot dead a well-known model, Jessica Lal, because she refused him a drink at the bar where she was serving in a celebrity party. Sharma had turned up with a group of friends which included Vikas Yadav, the son of another rich politician whose perennial success in evading prosecution for his gangsterism must have contributed to the young men’s sense of invulnerability. Lal told the young men that they had come too late and the bar was closed. Sharma offered her 1,000 rupees [$20] and she replied that he still could not have even a sip of alcohol. “I could have a sip of you for a thousand rupees,” replied Sharma, and took out a gun to threaten her. He fired a shot into the air and then a second shot into her head. He and his friends then left the bar.

The restaurant was crowded with witnesses, and Sharma himself told the TV cameras that he had shot her — “It was embarrassing to hear that even if I paid a thousand bucks I would not get a sip of drink.” But in the trial that followed, he was acquitted of the murder, mainly because thirty-two witnesses withdrew their initial testimony. The trial was later opened, partly as a result of a sting operation by a critical newspaper, Tehelka , which produced evidence of coercion and bribery of witnesses by Manu Sharma’s family, including his politician father, and Sharma was sentenced to life imprisonment.

Manu’s friend Vikas Yadav later had his own turn in the headlines. In 2002, Vikas and his brother, Vishal, apparently marched their sister’s twenty-four-year-old boyfriend out of a wedding party, loaded him into their Tata SUV and murdered him. They did not like the relationship between their sister and this man and, as we know, losing control of the family’s women was one of those things most likely to inflame north Indian masculine rage.

When I saw Nitish at the party, Vishal and I decided this was a great opportunity to fix things, a chance we would not get again… I told Vishal to take Nitish outside. It was midnight. Vishal and I made Nitish sit in the front seat of our Tata Safari. Vishal and Sukhdev Pehalwan were sitting at the back. I was driving. We reached Balwant Rai Mehta Lane at around 1.30 a.m., and stopped. We made Nitish move to the back seat, now Vishal and Pehlwan held him tight. I drove again and stopped somewhere between Bulandsher and Khurja. Using all my strength, I hit Nitish’s head with a hammer. He fainted and after a while he died. We drove one kilometre and then we threw his body onto the road. Vishal removed Nitish’s cell phone from his kurta pocket. He also took Nitish’s wristwatch and hid both these in the bushes that were nearby. I took the hammer that I used to murder Nitish and we hid that in the bushes too. Then we took the diesel from our car’s tank, poured it on Nitish’s body and we set it on fire. Then we drove to Delhi. 29