Of Power and the Prayerful

Childhood fevers have a place of reverence in my memory ledger. They have created my template of good values and bad. They have taught me how to be cared for, and how to care – in that order. They have given my delirium a script and a meaning, place and purpose. These were not long bouts of debilitating illness. Just a few days of high pitched flaming fevers, sometimes from the burning sun, sometimes from prancing about in untimely rain; at other times, for unexplained reasons.

In April 1979, a Hindu-Muslim riot broke out in the small town of Jamshedpur in eastern India, built around India’s first iron and steel industry. I was born and raised here. As all communal riots do, the reason was small and simple based on a sinister plan. It was a popular Hindu festival on that day; devotees were to gather in a procession which would go across the city carrying religious flags to celebrate. 

The route of the procession was contentious. It was to go through a Muslim neighbourhood, the provocations of which were well known to the local administration. However, the local Hindu leadership, in cahoots with the political leaders of the area ensured that this provocation was enacted. What followed was a stone pelting incident which quickly escalated to large scale rioting, bombs were thrown, swords were brandished and 108 lives were lost, mostly Muslim. An  ambulance full of fleeing women and children was set on fire.

Just ten days prior to this event, a well regarded leader of a Hindu fundamentalist organization visited Jamshedpur and exhorted Hindus to assert their rights in a Hindu country. The majoritarianism of prayerful Hindus killed both Muslims and Hindus during this riot.

I was nine at the time. I remember climbing up on the verandah wall of our house to try and see where the plumes of smoke were rising from, where the sounds of gun fire and the leaping flames found their womb. The shards of helpless cries of women and children flew past me as I saw small groups of men, women and children crouching in the dark and hobbling to safety right across the street. 

My mother was inside, quickly making a nondescript looking gunnysack into an emergency kit which we could flee with in case the need arose. She told me and my brother what it contained in a hushed tone of calm fear. My father was away working with the police team and the local legislator trying to stop the rioting. He returned late that night. My younger sister and I then slept with an unexplained and sudden bout of high fever.

This fever lent me a delirium of fear and hope; and upon waking, a lust for turning away the former with the power and prayers of the latter. Growing up in a household without an altar of worship crowded with idols of gods and goddesses, daily life had no place for cynicism or betrayal from the powerful divinity.

That evening of blood and bombs and swords in the air which flashed to the beat of cries for help was an act of betrayal by the powerful and prayerful majority Hindus against the Muslims in the area. Unrest based on faith must be the path of worship to more power, my delirium told me. As the riot receded to a policed calm the next morning, I was one fever older and wiser with a new template of human warmth despite our different prayers.