Living With Violence by Roma Chatterji;Deepak Mehta;

Author:Roma Chatterji;Deepak Mehta;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (Unlimited)
Published: 2007-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

The Genealogy of Relief Work and Remoralizing the Community

The narratives of relief work point to the failure of the moral community in the attempt to achieve normality. Consensus or mutuality as a basis for social life gives way to a collaborative silencing of specific memories. Yet we glimpse face-to-face relationships based on previous associations, on some acknowledgement of the uniqueness of voice, of the specificity of an individual's sufferings in spite of the disappointment with societal resources. Thus Ayeshabi's account links the extraordinary violence of the danga with known faces and groups of people who, even if they are characterized as criminals, are still part of her everyday life.

On the second day of the danga in December I was walking past the Khamba Devi temple early in the morning when I saw this boy with stab wounds in his chest. I managed to drag him up to the Ninetyfoot Road because I thought I could stop a car or a two-wheeler and take him to the hospital. No one stopped, not even police jeeps. It was Ashok Kale (a known hooligan with links to the underworld and the Shiv Sena) who stopped for me. He took us to the hospital. Actually, many of these boys have become like this because their mothers are not at home to check them. They go out to work and their boys mix with criminals.

Her account tacitly admits that co-existence is based on the recognition of differences. It assumes that different, and sometimes conflicting, moral values compose the identity of the other person. Similarly, Mahmud is able to contain the violence on the first day because he recognizes some of the people among the hordes of attackers and is able to stop them. On this occasion he uses their common affiliation as PROUD members. Later, he is able to avert the danger from his household by drawing on his previous alliance with the police. 'Some of my neighbours are Shiv Sainiks. But they are important because they know that my sons and I have a line to the police station. That runs through our shoes.' (It was said that policemen on duty would come to his workshop, even during the violence, when all work was at a standstill, to try on shoes.) At another time he uses his connection with the mosque, as its treasurer, to keep the peace in his neighborhood and to prevent a group of Muslim boys from damaging a temple. He says that normalcy can only be restored through negotiation, by appealing to different identities in terms of what the situation demands.

An attempt is made to normalize the extraordinary event by linking it with everyday acts of violence and potentially violent situations and times. Barkatulla speaks of certain festival days, such as Shiv Jayanti, when the gathering of large crowds in front of temples may spark off violence. Ayeshabi mentions taporis from neighboring Mangwada who sit outside their defecation house and snatch valuables from passers-by. Here, the recognition of nearness and

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