US Capitol Siege: The US and India Have Never Looked So Similar
Watching the raid on the US capital building yesterday, I was taken back to December 6, 1992.
I was in New Delhi, India, when a radical Hindu mob stormed a culturally significant 16th-century mosque called the Babri Masjid in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
While the attack itself was shocking to watch, it’s not as if it came out of the blue. For two years, Hindu political leaders had been drumming up public support to destroy the mosque and build a Hindu temple in its place.
For two years they held political rallies across the country. They conjured up their own reality about how the mosque stood on their god Rama’s sacred birthplace.* They pedalled in historical falsehoods, fake news, and conspiracy theories about the Indian muslim community.
Then on December 6, 1992, they organised a rally at which an estimated 150,000 loyalists gathered in Ayodhya, not far from the mosque itself.
It was just another political rally, they insisted. It would be peaceful.
Yes, these Trump-like political leaders had openly called for the destruction of the mosque. But India’s secular Congress Party, under Prime Minister P. V. Narasimha Rao, controlled the Indian government.
True, the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (the same BJP party that rules India today) controlled the parliament of Uttar Pradesh. But India was founded on principles of democratic secularism. The state government was bound by the rule of law.
Besides, the usual security forces and riot police were ready and waiting. They had ample warning. A cordon was set up around the mosque. The national media was there. It’s not as if a gathering of Indian citizens, many of them adorned in Hindu religious garb, would simply raid the mosque and try to destroy it themselves.
Yet that’s exactly what happened.
If you watch video of the event, you’ll see the similarities with yesterday’s siege of the US capitol building: The way the police seem almost oblivious to the possibility of an all-out attack (and in some cases suspiciously welcoming):
Indian Journalist: “Are things under control here?”
Indian Police Chief: “Yes, why not?”
Journalist: “But they’re breaking the barricade.”
Police Chief: “No, there’s a lot of enthusiasm in the people.”
Journalist: “But a situation can be created. Will you be able to control it?”
Police Chief: “It is under control.”
Journalist: “Is it?”
Police Chief: “Yes, it is under control.”
There’s a kind of nervous but shared civility between the officers and the mob, as if to say, “hey people, everything’s going to be okay here right? Step back. You’re going to respect my job, you’re going to listen to what I say, because we’re all reasonable people now, aren’t we?” As if such people can be reasoned with.
Or the way the police treat one group of people different from another (imagine the security had it been a Muslim rally next to a Hindu temple). White nationalists, Hindu nationalists — an insurrection can masquerade as a country’s cultural norms, even civility itself, until a lead group of fanatics takes matters into their own hands.
Or the way some climbed walls, some walked casually through doors, skirting around the helpless officers like tourists on day passes. Or the way the rioters attacked the media, destroyed their equipment, as if trying to prevent the documentation of a self-acknowledged shame.
Or how we seemed to watch the whole thing unfold, partly in disbelief, but also somehow familiar with a final act so often and so publicly foretold.
Both events struck at the heart of their respective countries. Both events pointed to deep, systemic flaws, raised real questions about real conspiracies; about the oddly lax security, about whether these attacks were well-planned in advance, about whether the perpetrators, especially the political ones, will ever receive justice.
Of course, there are differences, too: There were some truly heroic security forces at the Capitol building yesterday, some very brave people on one side. Guns were drawn. The rioters were finally evicted at the cost of several lives. At Ayodhya in 1992 no lives were reported lost, but the 16th century mosque was completely destroyed. Today the US capitol building still stands; the US Congress reassembled and continued with its proceedings.
One could argue India never really recovered from the destruction of the Babri Masjid. Along with the mosque, the country seemed to lose its foundational ideals. The BJP would go on to become India’s ruling party just four years later. Narendra Modi, a Hindu populist Trump-buddy, is India’s Prime Minister today.
Will the same happen in the US? Are America’s far-right fanatics emboldened by yesterday’s display of force? I’ve always felt both countries have produced some of the world’s greatest con artists. Delusional grifters, cult leaders, supreme conjurers of alternative realities. Swamis and Godmen in India. Fox news and OANN in America. Sai Baba and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. Bernie Madoff and — I want to say Eric Schmidt, but he’s just too damn good at his charlatanry. Let’s go with Zuckerberg. Or wait, WeWork’s Adam Neumann. Or no, Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos. Or no, Betsy Devos? Even without Trump, we’re spoiled for choice.
The question is, can the world’s two largest democracies recover from the spells their supreme charlatans have cast?
If we’re lucky, yesterday’s confirmation of Biden for president may represent the first step in that awakening.
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*Other places also claim to be the birthplace of Rama; but to shape a modern nation’s laws on ancient allegories of human consciousness is to enter Mike Pence’s world.
