Are ‘They’ Similar to ‘Us’?
But we were told they are different
“Fall back in line, you SWINE!!”, thrashed the officer and Muraad terrified, stopped peeking, and positioned himself back to form the straight queue along with 550 other prisoners to attend the morning orders. The sirens had blared and all the inhabitants had assembled in their lines, now almost used to this routine. Another line of humans, the officers, is directing this assembled line of humans for what lies ahead in the day. Muraad runs his gaze on ordering officers to spot Prem Sahib, the jailor who is in charge of the three story tall cage, spread over 5000 square meters divided into nearly thousand compartments just apt enough to let a person sleep without folding. This was the first operational detention center opened in Assam that had already admitted 700 prisoners identified as Muslims assumed infiltrators by the new Citizenship Amendment law.
Trying in to sneak another chance, Muraad broke the queue and approached Prem Sahib and asked once again “Sahib, did you find my wife?”. The jailor not surprised anymore by such requests, mechanically gave the same answer, “No, goddamn you bastard!” The prisoner fell back into the line and followed his inmates.
During the day, all prisoners got back to their work of breaking stones over the backyard where Muraad steals a glance of his two sons and a daughter who with the other children have been transporting the broken stones on carts and then to the truck. Prem Sahib noticing this distraction approaches Muraad but before he could reprimand him, Muraad blurted “Sahib, is there any news of my wife?”. This insolence went way past the officer’s patience and he shouted back “I don’t care whether she is alive or dead. I shall do less than lifting a pencil to search a Muslim woman who anyways should be either killed or thrashed behind the bars. So be grateful that at least you are alive and permitted to see your children.”
Muraad excited to receive more than just a disregard takes the harsh words as an opening for a longer conversation with the inspector. Taking his chance, he replied “Well Sahib, it is not surprising that you should think so. But she is as dear to me as your wife is to you and I do not find why she should be of a lesser importance to our country’s security personnel who are determined to protect the nation and also its people.”
The officer on hearing these words grew hysterical and exclaimed, “Oh of course, don’t you see I am protecting my people from leeches like you. You and your like have threatened our existence, either plundered our ancestors by ruling us or killed us by turning into terrorists. I am sure your community was plotting another scheme to rob the rightful Indians of their peace when we interjected and brought you to the place you actually deserve. Isn’t that what most of you have been accused of?”
“Sahib, I was employed as an attendant before I was taken to this prison and I met my wife in the hospital where I was working. She was a doctor and no sooner had I been assigned to her did I fall for her. It was not an usual romance. I was sure that she must not even be noticing me …”
“Do you think I would want to waste my time listening to this bullshit story of an anti-national?” he furiously gave a sharp blow to Muraad with his laathi receiving which Muraad staggered for a while but somehow stood again to catch up with the inspector who had already started heading back to his station.
“I am sorry Sahib, I just got lost into the memory lane. Well, what I wanted to say was that my wife and I were last treating jawans from the blast that are said to have been planted by the Naxalites in Dhubri. It is interesting that you call me anti-national for the patients that my wife and I treated have often remarked that we are contributing the same as they are. Are we then not similar, Sahib?” Immediately realizing that he crossed a line he cut his sentence and continued, “and…and…Sahib, the people from my mohalla most of whom are farmers have distributed their produce in times such as the attack to all affected. But I do agree that they didn’t help just the Hindus if that is what you meant by the rightful Indians, for there were some monks and Christians also involved. And just when you entered with your troops to carry us all here to a place that you call our rightful homes, we had started the baithak to reallocate our resources. If you remember Sahib, this was exactly two years four months ago when there had been rampant riots in the nearby district caused by the cleansing drives that the other sahibs had performed in that district. We were all discussing how to accommodate the newcomers who had taken shelter in our village after the rampant riots in their area.”
A little stirred by the fact, Prem Sahib continued “What good did you do if you again gave shelter to the ones that we removed?”
“But why would you want to drive out the Kalitas(a Hindu Tribe)? What have they done? Also, we did not go out looking for them. In fact, they approached us to allow them to share our spaces with them. And then Sahib, who will refuse to such a desperate plea by homeless bandhus (brothers). Insaniyat bhi toh koi cheez hai ki nahi? (Isn’t humanity something that we all should share?)”
Completely taken aback by realizing the identity of the people that actually got displaced in one of their cleansing drives, Prem prepares his counter when Muraad interjects “Sahib, please tell me how can I search for my wife? She must be troubled from not seeing her children and …”
The sirens interjected Muraad’s words and unwillingly he ran back knowing the consequences of being a minute late for the afternoon line. The jailor relieved and now in his office poured a quarter gin in his glass and started pacing the room restlessly. From up there his eyes followed Muraad in the line but then he shrugged himself back to his previous self and tried forgetting the conversation altogether. That day there were more than usual prisoners punished with lathi charge, more prisoners denied the supper, and the evening shift was continued for longer than usual on orders by the jailor.
After all the day’s engagement the jailor could still not retire as the stir created by a mere prisoner was somehow perplexing. Bent on his computer, he tried searching, using the keywords ‘origin of Muslims in India’, ‘Muslims becoming terrorists’, ‘Muslims occupying India’, ‘why should Muslims be kicked out of India’. He frantically kept going on to the next google pages until almost all were done for each category. At times convinced but still unconvinced, he kept at the task. The result was never satisfactory and yet the alternative thought that the searches concluded extremely unsettling to even consider. In a hysteric moment, he pushed away from the computer trying to ignore the results and even trying to forget the pursuit. But then afew minutes later he came back to his chair and opened another tab. This time he typed the words ‘Kalitas riots’, ‘Muslims in Assam’, ‘Treatment of soldiers injured in Naxalite Attack’. But we have been told they are different so then how when I listen to them, try to know about them, they appear similar to us. Is then most of what is told to us….a lie. He shunned this preposterous inference as soon as it arrived and not later than few minutes after he started to looking for these things, he switched back to the previous tab. It was at midnight that the jailor got up, prepared his bed, and looked at his wife’s photo for a while like always, and finally dozed off to sleep.
The jailor rose the next morning quite charged up and conducted the morning line himself. After the instructions got over and prisoners had started to disperse, he spotted Muraad and walked towards him and before Muraad could ask the whereabouts of his wife again, the inspector nudged him to a secluded space and said, “With all that you have done you still cannot deny that you are the descendants of those Mughals and Afghanis, your wretched forefathers” and midway spits in disgust and continues “have plundered my Bharat Mata. The Mughals, who have run rampant on the lands of my motherland, looted its wealth and run red its soil of the blood of its sons, how can we let their sons live on this very land? In fact you and your like should not be just imprisoned but slaughtered like how your fathers slaughtered ours”
“Sahib, I do not know of the ancestry you are talking about, but as far as I know I trace my farthest lineage to the father of my great grandfather who was then a zamindar in Bangla, way before it got separated into another country. I remember my father retelling me that his wife was a Brahmin and it was quite a scandal of his times for a match between a Sudra and a Brahmin cannot go unnoticed. It was after his son or grandson, I seem to not recall properly, that got the rest of the descent family converted to Islam. Supposedly their falling incomes were just not able to afford the rising rituals needed to maintain the sanctity of being a Brahmin anymore. I do not know more about this but he certainly saw that being a Muslim was way cheaper. Since then, his sons started reading the Quran and following the Aamil and his benevolent words about Allah.”
The inspector cringed at the sound of the last word but didn’t interrupt Muraad. “Our faith grew stronger and stronger since the generations after that. But you are not the first to say that we have descended from the Mughals, Sahib, for where else can a Muslim belong. It is something that had to be explained several times in my lifetime and that of my father. I am sure even my kids are now eloquently well versed in this story. My beloved wife….”
“Stop talking about your wife like you really care for her. I know better than this about how you scums treat your women. I know what your religion and your Quran speaks about the place of your wives in your households. I am sure she is better off even if she is dead than to be with one of you”
These words felt like bullets in Muraad’s ears, he enclosed his fist and was almost about to retaliate with a firm blow right at the jailor’s arrogant face who had durst to talk so of his wife. But just at that moment of aggression, an entirely opposite emotion yet with the same intensity succumbed Muraad. He broke into tears of agony and started weeping, while blurting out, “Yes Sir, you are saying nothing wrong. Even after all I did for her, I still believed she deserved better and greater. Had my love been sincere, I should have made sure that she is alright even when I was being dragged here.”
Still sobbing he continued, “Sahib, do every atrocity that you wish on me but please Shri Ram bhagwan ke khatir (for the sake of Shri Ram) locate my beloved wife and make sure she is safe and happy. Please, Sahib. There will be no other request coming out from this mouth for as long as I live. Please save my wife. Mein sirf photo dekh ke jee lunga (I‘ll live by just seeing her photo all my life).”
These words hit the jailor like a strong wave completely opposing the currents of his beliefs. It was now undoubtedly certain, they are similar. He empathetically asked, “What is the name of your wife again?”
Wiping his tears disbelievingly, he mumbled, “It is Sarasvati, Sahib, she is of medium built and wears red bangles with a string of gold and black beads around her neck.”
ABOUT THE STORY
How often do we truly listen to the other side of story? Do we ever take the efforts to check our biases which may have loose foundations and compare it with the reality? Whom we call as the ‘others’, have we ever tried to know them, hear them or understand them? It has been a long history of us creating divisions based on identities and then subjecting the so demarcated ‘others’ to discredited hatred often to the extent of desiring their persecution or demolition. We build our biases so strong and yet so unfounded that we often fail to check the truth behind our perceptions or the rationale behind our despise for ‘them’. This demagoguery when unchecked has resulted in world tragedies like German genocide which now we look back as a major human error.
But then how do we realize this unconscious demagoguery playing in our lives at the time when it is acting out and not just in hindsight? The only solution that the author Patricia Miller in her book ‘Democracy v/s Demagoguery’ can think of is compassion and empathy. Keeping these values as torchbearers for our outlook and treatment for others will ensure that we listen to the ones we do not find like ‘us’ and so somehow blur this distinction between ‘us’ and ‘they’.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maria Rangwala is a Chartered Accountant who is a literature enthusiast and is deeply engaged in liberal arts. She aims to learn as much and as diverse as possible which helps her broaden her perspective to be able to know the world in its entirety. As a Young India Fellow in Ashoka University she believes in taking life as it comes.
