Encounters with a Hindutva klansman

The past week has whizzed by at break-neck speed. I was acting as RA for a Professor doing research at a shrine in Karnataka. As part of the assignment I had to interview a member of the Bajrang Dal, one of the more popular Hindutva outfits in India. I can safely say that this has been by far the most infuriating and frightening experiences of my adult life. We sat at a table in a restaurant in the middle of town--my prof, Anil and I. He seemed like a normal, mild-mannered guy, speaking in tones so soft they were barely more than a murmur. And there he sat across from me speaking so casually about intimidation, violence and hatred. He smiled wistfully as he spoke of the early years of his involvement in the group when their violent mobs were subjected to laathi charges and shell-firing from government authorities. He grew more intense as he spoke of how Muslims lived in "our" country, ate "our" food, breathed "our" air, and about how "we Hindus" had to reclaim what was ours by whatever means. "If a mosquito bites me, I am not willing to sit there and let it suck my blood. I will do whatever is in my power to rid myself of the pest," he said. And then he took on a proud and smug air as he talked about the group's current and future plans: of spreading "awareness" among the public about the threats to our "Hindu nation", of how they "educated" the community and urged them to keep an eye on the Muslims who lived around them, of how they would reclaim Pakistan, Afghanistan and Bangladesh to form an undivided and Hindu India.

What was so infuriating was that he presumed that just because I was a Hindu, I had some natural empathy for his worldview and his cause; that all that he was doing, he was doing on my behalf, for my sake. And equally frustrating was that I could do nothing to correct this grossly incorrect assessment on his part; had I revealed my politics to him, he would not have been as candid as he had been thus far, thus denying us access to his chilling rhetoric.

This encounter has made me very glad that I did not take up Hindu-Muslim issues in India as the core of my dissertation research. The horror of each encounter, each interview, each new ethnographic relationship, would have driven me quite literally insane. And I do not think I could have dealt with the constant and vivid reminder that this kind of violence and hatred was so close to home, and took on a guise that was so deceptively normal.

An ode to the vegetable market

My greatest joy every week is my trip to the vegetable market. It's located in an alleyway on a bustling street called the Super Market. You get off the auto at the auto stand, make your way past the green and white mosque, past the plastic-walah and his hoard of scrubbers, combs, little boxes, funnels, marbled red and white buckets and toothbrush holders, and then left between the flower-sellers' carts with their gorgeous marigold and tuberose garlands, and their mountains of rose and jasmine. Walk down a few steps and you're in a world that assaults your senses. A make-shift arcade, the vegetable market is cobbled together with bamboo poles and jute sacks as roofing, a few dry goods and vegetable stores made of more solid stuff holding the whole thing together. The moment you step into the market you're hit with the smell...the pungent smell of people and peppers--hundreds and hundreds of people walk past, crushing underfoot green and red peppers that have dropped from the vegetable carts onto the paving. And then as you walk past each , you're nose is seduced by something new, something different...curry leaves, mint, bell-peppers, daikon raddishes...and oh! fenugreek! I stop and buy two bunches of lush green fenugreek leaves for five rupees, their sharp, fresh smell already conjuring visions of methi parathas and aalumethi.
The air is buzzing with the white noise of a thousand voices; here and there you can make out a boy calling out the price of his curry leaves, or a woman hawking garlic...but otherwise, it's a gush of human sound, incoherent and chaotic. And the colours--the colours of people, of clothes of fruit and flowers and vegetables and spices and intermittent patches of blue in the midst of the jute-brown roof.
Then down to my fruit-seller. He sits in the same corner every day. His store is just 3 feet squared--him in the middle (the lord and master of his fruity court), wearing the typical white button-less shirt and pajamas of a marathi merchant, his sacred thread peeking out by his shoulder. I'm a regular here now and he asks: "Apples again today?" But I'm distracted by the pile of fresh figs at his side. They're expensive...fifteen rupees for around seven or eight of them...but I don't care...they're fresh figs! "They're really sweet", he says, and hands me one to eat. I bite into it and only twenty-six years of breeding stops me from moaning in sheer delight. He wraps half a kilogram in newsprint and drops it into my bag. Then finally to the dry grocers. He too sits surrounded by his wares--lentils and rice, nuts and spices. He peers at me through his glasses. His eyes are small and beady through those glasses as thick as coke-bottle bottoms. His silvery beard is chest-long and he wears an embroidered skull-cap. I ask for rice and he produces, seemingly out of thin air, a gigantic ladel. It's bowl is as large as a wall-clock and it's handle around 4 feet long. He stands up, leans over and dips the ladel into a sack of rice miles away, then pours it onto the weighing scale at his side and finally tips it into a bag. I buy 10 grams of cardommom from him, say "shukriya" and head out into the open air.
I cram into an auto with two other women and head home. I stare at my bulging bag...I have rice, lentils, cardommom, raddishes, bell-peppers, grapes...but best of all, I have my frankincense and myrrh--fenugreek and fresh figs.