The New India by Rahul Bhatia

Author:Rahul Bhatia [Bhatia, Rahul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Published: 2024-11-12T00:00:00+00:00

4

The Hindu Awakens at 6 a.m.

The shakha Dhaniram had invited me to was easy to locate. Everybody knew it was on a muddy clearing along the canal, close to the bridge where the violence had begun in February 2020. Nisar knew the place too. He had lived a few minutes’ walk upstream before his eviction. He had mentioned to me in passing that some of the boys in the crowd downstairs on the day of his escape used to attend the shakha, but the significance of this did not seem to register in him.

It was still dark when I arrived. The gate to the shakha was barred by bamboo lathis, leaving just enough room for people to walk in. Of course there would be room. It made no sense to keep participants from a shakha, I thought. The whole enterprise would fall to pieces. Inside, beside an immense peepal tree, the kind whose age would almost certainly be exaggerated, Dhaniram was hunched tragically over his phone, his countenance pure lament. Sachin, his son, was nowhere to be seen, and neither was his dog. He was stoically negotiating with recalcitrant RSS volunteers still under their blankets, calling each of them and asking, ‘Ram Ram. Coming, no?’ Not yet dawn and he was already tired. Such is the life of the RSS foot soldier: how can he awaken Hindu society when his friends refuse to wake up?

He noticed me and said to come and sit.

‘The rain messed up everything,’ he explained. ‘It’s been raining since 1.30. They’ll come. They’re late, but they’ll come.’ The shakha had almost two hundred and fifty members, of whom ten or twelve showed up every day, except when it rained. ‘There were nineteen yesterday.’ He was somehow more energised and mobile since our last meeting. The swelling in his knees had subsided.

I talked about what wet and cold nights did to a person’s resolve to rise early, but my empathy sounded defeatist to him. He laughed politely and continued calling. Rainwater had collected in pools across the ground. He considered them with concern, and wondered aloud whether there was room for the day’s exercises. Then a man arrived with two sleepy children in pyjamas, a heavy lathi, a long steel pipe and an iron stake with an alarmingly sharp end. It was a sariya, a rebar used in building construction. Survivors of the riots in the area had recalled men clutching sariyas among the mobs. A sariya could make short work of padlocks, shutters and people, they said.

‘Ram Ram,’ the man said.

‘Ram Ram. What’s the matter today? Nobody’s coming. It must be because of the rain.’

‘Where’s Mahesh ji? And Shekhar ji? And Sachin ji?’

‘Mahesh ji is at a meeting. Shekhar ji is sleeping. He’s using the rain as an excuse. Sachin ji is also at a meeting.’

The children were a picture of dazed commitment. They tottered in sleep, waiting to receive further instructions after the adults finished their business.

‘Should I make the mandal?’ the man asked. Dhaniram told him where to put it.

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