In Riot Politics: Hindu Muslim Violence and the Indian State, author Ward Berenschot evokes images that are better than anything filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma at his best could have ever imagined

Joseph Mathai

Riot Politics: Hindu Muslim Violence and the Indian State

Ward Berenschot

Rainlight/Rupa

Rs.495

Pg 236

Anand Patwardhan?s brave film In The Name of God has a scene where the court-appointed priest of the chabutara at Babri Masjid, Pujari Lal Das, is asked what he felt of the violent Hindu resurgence of the early 1990s. In reply, he quotes a verse from the Aranya Kand of the Ramayana, ?When the rains are heavy, the grass grows so tall that it?s difficult to find the right path.? He goes on to explain the metaphor, ?So when charlatans speak, the truth gets hidden. Like if someone eats an intoxicant, he?s capable of anything. He can go mad, attack, even commit suicide. In the moment of frenzy, the capacity to think gets destroyed. But the rainy season is short.?

Lal Das was killed in 1993 three years after this statement was recorded. It is now 20 years later and the optimism of the last sentence has not borne fruit, though it still does not fail to inspire. The speech of charlatans still holds the potential to start violence. Over the years, much has been said, written and done on the issue of communal violence; but we still see the debate shifting further and further to an acceptance of majority entitlements. A sense of fatigue fills the heart when we approach another book on the subject.

Thus this writer must confess to a prejudice that arose when Riot Politics: Hindu Muslim Violence and the Indian State arrived with the task of reviewing it. What more could be written about communal violence that a foreign scholar could tell us? The laudatory blurbs were immediately dismissed as marketing hype. Still, a commitment given forced a complete read and, in the end, the effort was extremely rewarding.

The scholarship revealed in the introductory part of the book is redoubtable. Yet the cynical reviewer sniffed: here was vindication of the Left Handed Dictionary?s definition of research as being the act of digging up old bones to put into new coffins.

A degree of interest arose with the two chapters in the second part of the book. Then again, it was a familiar tale of industry fleeing the city and leaving behind an uprooted working class that fell prey to divisive right-wing ideology. In the case of Ahmedabad, which this book is based on, the Congress led the working class through the Textile Labour Association (TLA). The growing irrelevance of the TLA and infighting in the party contributed to the erosion of the Congress cadre base in Ahmedabad, allowing the more avowedly Hindu chauvinistic BJP to make dramatic inroads.

It was Part III of the book that led this reviewer to realise why the book has earned the plaudits that it proudly displays on its dust jacket. It is here that the author shares the narratives he has gathered from his 15-month stay in Isanpur, an informal settlement in Ahmedabad (the author avoids the use of the clich? ?slum?). The author studied the localities of Isanpur, Maneknagar and Raamrahimnagar, and the narratives he excavates are a result of an ethnographic approach he meshes well with his extensive reading of available literature. It is very much to his credit that the ethnographic accounts show that he has been able to blend into these localities as an unobtrusive observer.

He follows the phenomenon of riot politics from the arterial flow of the meta narrative to the capillaries of micro narratives that describe interactions at the level of the locality and individual in the everyday and how these function at the time of the outbreak of violence. This is what makes this book exceptional.

The uniqueness of the book is the insight the author provides about the locality and life of the urban working class. Here, he follows in a tradition of writing that has emerged as popular in India both as fiction as seen in Gregory David Roberts? Shantaram or Katherine Boo?s non-fiction Behind the Beautiful Forevers. However, Riot Politics has both a sharper ring of authenticity and a more dramatic edge to the stories. Truth be told, some images evoked here are better than anything that filmmaker Ram Gopal Verma at his best could have ever imagined.

In a sub-section titled Violence as performance, there is the tale of how a Dr Gupta (all names in the book have been changed) was approached by a goonda called Shaidev. Shaidev emptied out the six bullets from his gun on the doctor?s table and asked him to choose the bullet with which he wanted to die. Money exchanged hands and the good doctor lived to see another day.

There is another account of a meeting between Hindu and Muslim toughs in the market on a winter?s night. Both groups tease and joke with each other. Individuals across both groups describe to the author how in a riot situation they would throw stones and fight with each other, but at other times, remain good friends.

Through all these fantastic tales, the author weaves a tapestry of relationships that link the fragments with the overarching structures of power. It is not a monochromatic image.

There is the case of Raamrahimnagar and its resistance to the violence. This is not just true for the 2002 riots, but was also the case during the riots in 1969, 1985 and 1992. Central to this history is the Raam Rahim Nagar Jhupadavasi Mandal (RJM). The RJM was set up in 1973 and is a neighbourhood council that intervenes for civic services for Raamrahimnagar.

While inhabitants of all three localities the author studies seek intermediation to deal with state and civic authorities, only Raamrahimnagar has an organisation that is to a significant degree independent of the established political parties. In the 2005 municipal elections, a former RJM president contested for one of the municipal elections and the RJM put its weight behind him. Their candidate lost, but it shows the independent will of the organisation.

During the riots in 2002, the RJM prevented violence in their locality. Activists patrolled the locality, warned inhabitants who belonged to the parties spreading violence elsewhere in the city and across the state not to make any mischief here and repulsed attempts of outsiders from visiting violence to their neighbourhood.

The importance of locality-level organisation is underscored in this book. With stagnant numbers in organised labour and the growing informalisation of labour, the work site as an arena of organisation is growing less significant, yet locality-based organisation is still to emerge. On the other hand, religious mobilisation has traditionally been locality-based. Perhaps it is time for secular and democratic political entities to work more energetically at the locality level.

Ground reality is full of possibilities. Major incidents of communal violence occur only when top down initiatives drive the riot across all the existing networks of power. To counter communal violence, we have to build bottom up resistance. Locality-based democratic, broadly secular organisations that mediate between the individual and state on everyday issues can play a big role in this resistance. It is only when they assert their presence would we be assured of Pujari Lal Das? short rainy seasons.

Joseph Mathai works in publishing and is associated with the civil rights movement in India