1975 or 1977? Take your pick, Mumbai

It was the same in Mumbai or Bombay as it then was. Crowds thronged the streets. Traffic couldn’t move for the people who kept flooding on to the roads. It didn’t matter. For pedestrians, vehicles, drivers, everyone and everything was caught up in this huge warm embrace. It percolated from whispers, scoreboards and from the little transistors that for once, were tuned not to cricket scores but something far more significant. And in the maidans where people had collected whoops of joy went up as the architects of the Emergency fell one by one.

That was a moment of celebration. Of a victory made sweet by the bitterness of the Emergency, starting 1975. A time when people could go missing and die mysteriously; when the press was censored and dissenters jailed; when a number of men, young and old were caught and forcibly sterilized; when all kinds of petty tyrants came into being and flourished. Bombay may not have suffered as much as many parts of Northern India. Yet it was far from immune to the sense of powerlessness created by the suspension of civil rights.

I think of that night with great bafflement now. Bafflement caused by events that hit the headlines with such shocking regularity these days. This week, BJP activists stormed a hospital after the death of a BJP leader from gunshot wounds compounded, they claimed, by the negligence of the attending doctor. According to newspaper reports, the mob ran amok in the hospital and later at the doctor’s private nursing home, smashing furniture, chasing nurses, roughing up doctors.

Some weeks prior to this Congress workers disrupted the performance of a play on Nathuram Godse. The performance was cancelled, the play virtually banned and prospective viewers were forced to leave. Between the two incidents, the Shiv Sena-BJP government rejected a report by an appointed commission set up to investigate the violence that resulted in widespread killings and damage in the city five years ago. The Chief Minister threatened he would rather resign and take to the streets than arrest his leader Bal Thackeray who was indicted by the commission. Newspapers report at least two murders every day and policemen claim that the only way they can control crime is by bumping off suspected criminals.

What is happening? Mobs storming hospitals! Theatre performances disrupted! A democratically elected government threatening anarchy! Shootings on the streets!

And cops itching to play Hangman. Is this the rule of law that we sought to reestablish in 1977, or is this a return to the ways of 1975? The form, of course has changed. Twenty years ago we could trace all our ills to the dictatorial duo that ruled Delhi. Today, in this age of liberalisation, the disrespect for law is everywhere.

But perhaps I should not be surprised. For Bombay is nothing if not schizophrenic. Despite that euphoric night in 1977, a poll conducted by a magazine to mark the passing of ten years after the declaration of the Emergency, found that a majority of people surveyed in Bombay supported the Emergency. One reason quoted, I remember, was that it enabled the trains to run on time.

The absence of the rule of law seems to me far too steep a price to pay to have the trains run on time (Whether or not they do, is of course, a moot point). But perhaps it is time for the real Mumbai to assert itself. 1975 or 1977? Take your pick.