Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

The District Magistrate, who was in his mid-thirties, was directly in charge of the civil administration of Brahmpur District and, together with the SP — as the Superintendent of Police was referred to by everyone — maintained law and order.

The PA tried to get through, then said: ‘Sorry, Sir, DM is out on the site. He is trying to conciliate—’

‘Give me the phone,’ said the Home Minister in a calm voice. The PA nervously handed him the receiver.

‘Who?. . Where?. . I am Agarwal speaking, that’s who. . yes, direct instructions. . I don’t care. Get Dayal at once. . Yes, ten minutes. . call me back. . The SP is there, that is enough surely, is it a cinema show?’

He put down the phone and grasped the grey curls that curved like a horseshoe around his otherwise bald head.

After a while he made as if to pick up the receiver again, then decided against it, and turned his attention to a file.

Ten minutes later the young District Magistrate, Krishan Dayal, was on the phone. The Home Minister told him to guard the entrance of the Govind Shoe Mart. He was to disperse any pickets forthwith, if necessary by reading out Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code — and then firing if the crowd did not disperse.

The line was unclear but the message disturbingly clear. Krishan Dayal said in a strong voice, but one which was fraught with concern: ‘Sir, with respect, may I suggest an alternative course of action? We are talking with the leaders of the crowd—’

‘So there are leaders, are there, it is not spontaneous?’

‘Sir, it is spontaneous, but there are leaders.’

L.N. Agarwal reflected that it was puppies of the ilk of Krishan Dayal who used to lock him up in British jails. He said, calmly:

‘Are you being witty, Mr Dayal?’

‘No, Sir, I—’

‘You have your instructions. This is an emergency. I have discussed things with the Chief Secretary by phone. I understand that the crowd is some three hundred strong. I want the SP to get the police stationed everywhere along the main road of Misri Mandi and to guard all entrances — Govind Shoe Mart, Brahmpur Shoe Mart and so on — you just do the needful.’

There was a pause. The Home Minister was about to put down the phone when the DM said:

‘Sir, we may not be able to spare such a large number of police at short notice. A number of policemen are stationed at the site of the Shiva Temple in case of trouble. Things are very tense, Sir. The Revenue Minister thinks that on Friday—’

‘Are they there at the moment? I did not notice them this morning,’ said L.N. Agarwal in a relaxed but steely tone.

‘No, Sir, but they are in the main police station in the Chowk area, so it is sufficiently close to the temple site. It is best to keep them there for a true emergency.’ Krishan Dayal had been in the army during the war, but he was rattled by the Home Minister’s calm air of almost dismissive interrogation and command.

‘God will take care of the Shiva Temple. I am in close touch with many members of the committee, do you think I do not know the circumstances?’ He had been irked by Dayal’s reference to ‘a true emergency’ as much as by his mention of Mahesh Kapoor, his rival and — as abrasive chance would have it — the MLA from the constituency contiguous to his own.

‘Yes, Sir,’ said Krishan Dayal, his face reddening — which luckily the Home Minister could not see. ‘And may I know how long the police are to remain there?’

‘Until further notice,’ said the Home Minister and put down the phone to pre-empt further backchat. He did not like the way these so-called civil servants answered back to those above them in the chain of command — who were besides, twenty years older than them. It was necessary to have an administrative service, no doubt, but it was equally necessary that it should learn that it no longer ruled this country.

On Friday at the midday prayer the hereditary Imam of the Alamgiri Mosque gave his sermon. He was a short, plump man with short breath, but this did not stem his jerky crescendos of oratory. If anything, his breathlessness gave the impression that he was choked with emotion. The construction of the Shiva Temple was going ahead. The Imam’s appeals to everyone from the Governor down had fallen on deaf ears. A legal case contesting the Raja of Marh’s title to the land contiguous to the mosque had been instituted and was at present going through the lowest court. A stay order on the construction of the temple, however, could not be immediately obtained — indeed, perhaps could not be obtained at all. Meanwhile the dung-heap was growing before the Imam’s agonized eyes.

His congregation was tense already. It was with dismay that many Muslims in Brahmpur had, over the months, seen the foundations of the temple rising in the plot to the west of their mosque. Now, after the first part of the prayers, the Imam gave his audience the most stirring and inflammatory speech he had given in years, very far removed from his ordinary sermon on personal morality or cleanliness or alms or piety. His grief and frustration as much as their own bitter anxiety called for something stronger. Their religion was in danger. The barbarians were at the gates. They prayed, these infidels, to their pictures and stones and perpetuated themselves in ignorance and sin. Let them do what they wanted to in their dens of filth. But God could see what was happening now. They had brought their beastliness near the very precincts of the mosque itself. The land that the kafirs sought to build on — why sought? were at this very moment building on — was disputed land — disputed in God’s eyes and in man’s eyes — but not in the eyes of animals who spent their time blowing conches and worshipping parts of the body whose very names it was shameful to mention. Did the people of the faith gathered here in God’s presence know how it was planned to consecrate this Shiva-linga? Naked ash-smeared savages would dance before it — naked! These were the shameless, like the people of Sodom, who mocked at the power of the All-Merciful.

. . God guides not the people

of the unbelievers.

Those — God has set a seal on their

hearts, and their hearing, and their eyes,

and those — they are the heedless ones;

Without a doubt, in the world to come they

will be the losers.

They worshipped their hundreds of idols that they claimed were divine — idols with four heads and five heads and the heads of elephants — and now the infidels who held power in the land wanted Muslims, when they turned their faces westwards in prayer to the Kaaba, to face these same idols and these same obscene objects with their heads bowed. ‘But,’ continued the Imam, ‘we who have lived through hard and bitter times and have suffered for our faith and paid for our faith in blood need only remember the fate of the idolaters:

And they set up compeers to God, that

they might lead astray from His way.

Say: “Take your joy! Your homecoming

shall be — the Fire!”’

A slow, attentive, shocked expectation filled the silence that followed.

‘But even now,’ cried the Imam in renewed frenzy, half-gasping for air, ‘even as I speak — they could be hatching their designs to prevent our evening devotion by blowing their conches to drown out the call to prayer. Ignorant they may be, but they are full of guile. They are already getting rid of Muslims in the police force so that the community of God will be left defenceless. Then they can attack and enslave us. Now it is too clear to us that we are living not in a land of protection but a land of enmity. We have appealed for justice, and have been kicked down at the very doors where we have gone pleading. The Home Minister himself supports this temple committee — and its guiding spirit is the debauched buffalo of Marh! Let it not happen that our holy places are to be polluted by the proximity of filth — let it not happen — but what can save us now that we are left defenceless before the sword of our enemies in the land of the Hindus, what can save us but our own efforts, our own’—here he struggled for breath and emphasis again—‘our own direct action — to protect ourselves. And not just ourselves, not just our families but these few feet of paved earth that have been given to us for centuries, where we have unrolled our mats and raised our hands in tears to the All-Powerful, which are worn smooth by the devotions of our ancestors and ourselves and — if God so wills — will so be by our descendants also. But have no fear, God does so will, have no fear, God will be with you: