UNBELONGING

While the foundation stone was being laid in Ayodhya for a temple in the name of the Hindu lord Ram, rain and wind lashed Mumbai, ripping off pieces of buildings’ facades, pulling out trees by their very roots, bending metallic bones to their snapping point. For those of us who have been wondering what hellish parallel reality we’ve been stuck in since BJP came to power in 2014, it felt as though the weather was something that we’d manifested. Windows rattled, doors shuddered, walls and floors wept while the wind howled and the rain raged. It was as though our broken hearts had pushed out of our slumped, lockdown bodies and taken possession of the outside world for a few hours.

In the days and weeks leading up to August 5, the portents — those critically important details in every mythmaking project — weren’t encouraging. One seer, Shankaracharya Swaroopanand Saraswati, said the timing was inauspicious. Two priests (part of a “team” that’s been conducting daily rituals at the site where Babri Masjid had once stood and where the temple for Ram will be built) tested positive for Covid-19 as did one of the temple’s most fervent champions, the Union Home minister. But you know how it is. The show must go on.

And so it did.

Because it is a show. The temple in Ayodhya is not about faith or religion. It’s about politics, muscle-flexing and the machismo of facial hair. (Of course the whole business of Hindutva leader Sambhaji Bhide demanding moustaches for the Ram and Laxman idols becomes less ridiculous and more nauseating when you remember ours is a country where Dalit men are killed for ‘daring’ to sport moustaches, those twirly signifiers of glorious Kshatriya masculinity.) It’s a spectacle and depending upon your perspective and perceptions, it’s either a distraction or a pointer.

This temple, the Ram Mandir, has been the pot of gold at the end of Hindutva’s rainbow for decades now, but the ceremony had to happen on August 5 to make sure the official record for the day shows stories of triumph, rather than reminders of the unholy mess that is India’s Kashmir ‘policy’.

On August 5, 2019, Kashmir was stripped of its special status while under a brutal lockdown. On that day, India re-established itself as a coloniser and took control of Kashmir by first increasing Army presence and then arresting democratically-elected leaders (later, civilians including children would be held in custody, according to reports).

(I say “re-established” because coloniser is the only word that accurately sums up mainland India’s relationship with the North Eastern states. India, a postcolonial and a coloniser. Take that Cat of Schroedinger.)

To make sure news from Kashmir didn’t get out easily, a communications blackout was imposed before August 5 and while it has since been officially relaxed, in reality all this means is that Kashmir now has access to 2G internet. Be still my beating heart. If you’re the sort who likes records, this is probably the longest-running electronic curfew in modern history.

A year later, that anniversary is buried under the yammering about the Ram temple at Ayodhya. Earlier in the day, some news anchors sang bhajans on air. Journalists who pride themselves on being liberal found Muslims who are apparently suffused with joy that this temple is being built. Keeping a straight face, it was reported that the prime minister of a secular democracy was being given a coronation (it’s another matter that the mukut looked every bit like a prop from a mythological show). The Hindu rashtra is here. Namaste, pranaam and please drink up your cow pee, sorry, gaumutra.

It’s not just Kashmir that has been determinedly written out of the narrative of this saffron-tinted nation (ironically, Kashmir is the only place in India that cultivates saffron, and the recent months have been rough for saffron farmers). Almost no one is talking about how till 1992, there had been a 16th century mosque standing at that precise spot in Ayodhya where the temple will be built. Neither is there any discussion about the minor detail that the mosque had been razed by a mob. Not by bulldozers or earth-moving machines, but by regular people who demolished a three-domed structure to rubble (despite police presence), using implements like shovels and pickaxes, and their frenzied hands. Many kept bricks from the demolished structure as trophies. Yes, Right-wing, Muslim-hating Hindus have proudly preserved remnants of a mosque in their homes because they see it as proof of their Hindu pride. While a few remember that time as a period of madness, too many are proud of that horrible moment in our history, which is probably why we are where we are now.

No one has talked about the riots that followed the demolition of Babri Masjid, in which thousands were killed all over the country. There’s been nothing on the Supreme Court verdict from last November that details how Babri Masjid was repeatedly vandalised by Hindus and notes the absence of any evidence of a temple at the spot, before going on to say the Hindus get dibs on the disputed site anyway.

August 5 is the day on which we remember how our institutions have failed us. Let the record show that the record has erased more than it has preserved.

So it’s a bit of a shock to find myself searching for photos from this unholy event and zooming in on them. Because boss, the devil is in the cosmetic details. First of all, can we take a moment to examine the Prime Minister’s beard? A friend of mine is convinced that it’s supposed to make everyone who sees him think of Chhatrapati Shivaji, but my friend is Maharashtrian and tends to forget that the rest of the country doesn’t have Shivaji emblazoned upon their subconscious. All I know is that the beard looks simultaneously fluffy and square, which is definitely supposed to make you think of kingly regalia (rather than the shaggy length of sages and ascetics). Also, whoever is in charge of grooming that beard should get a toffee — or laddoo? — for their efforts because making sure the beard retains shape and fullness is not easy to do. I have seen many lockdown beards and feel confident in declaring they do not naturally take on such geometric proportions.

And then there’s the hair. What is going on with the follicular flourish at the Prime Minister’s nape? It’s not like he can’t get hold of someone to trim his hair, so obviously that is the intended look. Is it supposed to look like the hairstyle sported by the cast of Ramanand Sagar’s Ramayana? Are those hair extensions? Is the hair at the nape supposed to distract us from the receding hairline? Is the wave-like lift supposed to signify the rise of Hindutva?

I’m trying to dull the sharp edge of how completely wrong all of today has felt. It’s hardly the first time — every few months, I seem to tell myself that I will remember this day as the one in which I realised the country I thought was mine has no place for me; that I unbelong here but I will stand my ground and watch it burn, without shedding a tear — and yet, it packs as strong a punch each time. Disappointment and despair have no generation loss.

It is a relief to think this can’t last. Sooner rather than later, this terrifying toxic mess of a culture will consume itself and leave behind nothing but bloodstained fragments and barely-comprehensible traces. At some point in the distant future, there will be historians and chroniclers who will read and study our documents and narratives. They will wonder what happened to us and they will ask, like we did of Nazi-era Christians, “Did they really not know?”

Let the record show we knew. We knew of the lynchings, the rapes, the beatings, the abuses. We knew there were homes being set ablaze and monsters being put on pedestals. We knew we were becoming a nation of puppets. We knew the mosques were torn down and the godmen were liars. We knew that fiction was replacing fact and we knew it was being done in our name. Let the record also show that despite knowing it could only end in failure, some of us spoke up. We took to the streets even though we knew it was a dead end. We protested, only to realise we have no agency.

Let the record show we have hearts that break and spines that crumble. We have the burning rage of the powerless and the undying dreams of the disillusioned. We collect stories and squander chances. We are the ones who don’t belong and our voices are only heard when the monsoon wind howls and screams.