Shashi Tharoor - Riot

In riots, all sorts of things happen. People strike first and ask questions later. It’s tough to be a cop in a riot.

You can tell I’m a Lakshman fan. Our partnership was natural, and necessary. The policing challenge was intertwined with the administrative challenge. Intimately, like one of those couples in the temple sculptures at Khajuraho. I’ll give you an example. The day after the bomb attack, the DM got a telephone call. One of the seriously injured riot victims, a young bugger, a Muslim called Mohammed, Sweet Mohammed they used to call him, had died on the way to the medical college hospital. They’d slit his throat and he’d bled to death in the ambulance. It was the middle of the frigging curfew, and what does the bloody hospital want? To get the district administration to arrange for the disposal of the body double-quick. So Lucky sent for the young man’s father, and the sadr or leader of the Muslim community, a humane and gentle old bugger known universally as Rauf-bhai, “Brother Rauf.” Rauf-bhai sat there, unblinking behind his thick glasses, his yellowing beard stretching out like a shield, a white cap on his head. But you know what? His bloody presence alone seemed to quiet the distraught father. Thanks to Rauf-bhai, the father agreed to a quiet funeral. After midnight. It was the only way we could prevent a fresh upsurge of violence. If they’d held the bloody funeral during the day, there would have been another fucking riot.

I arranged for the morgue van carrying the body from the medical college hospital to halt at a rural police thana on the outskirts of Zalilgarh, to wait till midnight. Lucky and I went there. You know, to offer solace to the bereaved family. The DM was very quiet the whole way, which meant he was either exhausted or thinking, or both. Either way, I spared him my jokes for once. Sad bloody scene, Randy. Mohammed’s mother was weeping desolately near the body of her son. The father and the sadr, Brother Rauf, were grieving nearby. Lucky walked up to them and quietly said: “We cannot bring back your son. But tell us who was responsible for your loss and we will ensure that justice is done.”

The mother replied in angry bitterness. “There is no point in telling you the names of the killers. Every time in Zalilgarh when there are riots, the same men lead the mobs, looting and burning and killing, but nothing ever happens to them. During the last riots, we were hopeful because the police even noted down our statements. We waited for four days, but nothing happened. In the end the police did come, but it was we who were arrested. So this time we have nothing to say.”

The DM turned to me and then back to them. “I promise you,” he said in that quiet way of his, “that this time justice will be done. I was not here during the last riots. This time I am here. Please give me the names.”

And they did finally give the frigging names — of some of the most powerful and prestigious men of the bloody district. The DM turned to me and said very calmly, “Let us round them all up before the body of this boy is lowered into the dust.”

“Yes, sir,” I replied. No “Lucky” this time, not even “Lakshman”; this was an order from the DM. I left the thana immediately in my jeep, roaring out of there like a blast from a buffalo’s behind. I broke my own fucking speed limit several times that evening. I knew the DM would also have to leave on his incessant patrols. It was after midnight when I returned to the graveyard. They’d finished digging the boy’s grave. I followed the beam of my torch across the cold moonless dark of the cemetery to the burial spot. The DM was back. The body had not yet been lowered into the dust.

I marched up to the DM, who was standing with the bereaved family. “Sir,” I said, “they have all been arrested.”

You should have seen the expressions on the frigging faces of those Muslim mourners. They didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.

It was around three o’clock in the morning when the DM and I returned to our camp cots in the police station. We wearily stretched out, fully dressed, to catch a little sleep. Two hours later, as dawn was breaking, we were awakened by an uproar at the thana gates. “What the hell is going on?” I demanded of the constable on duty. “It sounds like a pair of hippos making babies on a tin sheet.” Lucky was still rubbing the sleep from his eyes when we found that it was indeed a hippo in human shape. The local MLA from the ruling party, member of the state legislative assembly, a generously endowed and utterly charmless specimen of the tribe called Maheshwari Devi, had arrived. She was with a group of her supporters, all banging pots and pans and shouting motherloving slogans. And frigging hell, they were all holding curfew passes.

“Injustice, injustice!” she was crying out, dutifully echoed by her eunuch supporters. “We will not put up with this injustice. We will not allow the arrest of innocent people.”

It didn’t take long for Lucky to wake up and figure out what the hell had happened. I’d never seen him so furious. “Tell me,” he asked her, “are you the representative of just one community, and not of this whole town? The last few days, when hundreds of Muslims were arrested, beaten, dragged by their beards, and placed behind bars, often on mere suspicion, even though many had no criminal records, no complaint against them, I never heard even a whimper of protest from you. But last night, because ten men have been arrested, after complaints in which they were directly named as guilty of murder, you march here within two hours and shout of injustice? How dare you!”

The hippo was so pissing startled by this outburst you could have heard her veins pop. No mere government official had ever dared to address her this way. She was as much at a loss how to respond as a blind nympho to a wink. “Get out,” the DM said, though if you asked him, he’d fucking say he “directed her to leave the premises of the police station immediately and refused to discuss the issue any further.” I escorted her out.

Don’t give up on me just yet, Randy. Come on, have another drink. You see, that was not the end of the story. The MLA’s demonstration was only the beginning — political foreplay. The whole day witnessed more pressure on the DM than he had experienced, he tells me, in a single day on any issue during his career. The chief minister of the state telephoned to inquire why there was so much outrage. The DM replied that it was a matter of basic justice, and he would not change his decision. He was relieved that the CM did not get back to him again. But from the state capital downwards, the pressure continued to mount like a bad case of wind. Then, just as perceptibly, it eased in the afternoon. Once again, we thought we’d weathered the bloody storm.

Late that night — in keeping with our daily pattern since the tension in the town had arisen — we sat together at police headquarters. We were reviewing the arrests and releases of the day — our scorecard, we used to call it. Lucky noted that some of the numbers didn’t add up. He summoned the station house officer and asked him to explain.

The bugger was more tight-lipped than a Hindi film actress who’s been asked to kiss the villain. But finally the station house officer revealed that the ten men arrested the previous night had been released. By the frigging courts. Late the same bloody morning.

Lucky looked like a cow that had been hit on the head with a trishul. “Released?” he asked incredulously. “But how could they release them?”

Further questioning revealed that the police — my own men, goddamn them — had framed the weakest possible charges against the sisterlovers. Not of murder, arson, and rioting, but of the most minor bloody offense possible: violation of curfew. So the courts had let the detainees off with a fine of fifty rupees each. Just under three dollars at current exchange rates, Randy. No wonder we hadn’t been bothered by the screaming politicians all afternoon.