Historical amnesia will prove fatal

The social fabric of Mumbai waslike a quilt — colourful, vibrant, eclectic — with this very peculiar current of a life-force running through it — with people from many cultures gathering to trade and work, to debate, create, disband ideas and beliefs. The aptest metaphor could be the local trains — it was both a leveller, and that which was constantly in movement.

And then, for the first time in Mumbai’s 300-year-old history, we gorged and fattened ourselves with an unheard of, savage appetite for violence. A month later we played hosts to the bomb blasts. Soon there were two entities — `you’ and the `other’. And that is what communalism does to us — it helps us segregate and identify the `other,’ not realising that in the process you are also marking out yourself. And soon, even before we’re realising it, the list of the `other’ is increasing in small, but dangerous numbers. Because any kind of cultural monotheism leads to the permanent abortion of the mind, the asphyxiation of the soul, and one inherits a sterile, listlesslandscape. And on it shall inhabit a citizenry of clones — with only one colour allowed — say purple — to cover our skins, our trees, our trains, our rice. And our dreams shall also turn purple!

What was alarmingly dangerous about the ’92-’93 riots was the deliberate participation of the ordinary citizen in violence, with a vehemence and spiritedness never witnessed before. This participation was seen both at the physical and the verbal level. And at the latter level, it swung right across our places of work, from the corporate sector to the trade unions. Suddenly because of this imagined sense of insecurity and fear, there was a coward’s outburst of aggression. Comparatively, those indulging in physical violence might have been small in number, but what is disturbing is the assimilation of this violence into the mainstream. And if one were to make a historical derivation, this phenomenon, like nemesis, reappears in our morning newspapers along with our cup of coffee, as shoot-out after shoot-out.

Itmight be our regular electrician who comes to fix our washing machine. During those times of violence, he has killed a few of those belonging to the `other’ community, and has also looted some shops, in a neighbourhood far away from ours. And we do not know. And even if we know, we remain silent. Silence is the greatest form of violence, because the silent one, unlike the aggressor, acknowledges the act, and also lets the other die. So it becomes a double-edged, self-inflicting weapon. The film footage on Nazi Germany should bear witness to those pages from history. First there was this massive outpouring of people lined up to cheer Hitler. And then there was Hitler shown cuddling babies, and holding flowers in his hands, with an eternal and benign smile on his face. The rest of the images — like skulls, rib-cases, bones and what was once legs and hands, emaciated bodies, lamp shades made from the skins of human bodies and many such others — are all cliches. Death, like everything else, has become one nice,bloody, sloppy spread. We have internalised it like thirst, reaching out to water when we want to quench its pain.

The Srikrishna Commission set up to inquire into the riots of ’92-’93 in Mumbai, is an important political record, of a violation of human rights, in the history of a great city like Mumbai. The Commission of Inquiry has indicted various political leaders, the state, the police, the other departments of the state, and many others. But it is also time we appropriate blame on ourselves and acknowledge a collective sense of shame and guilt on the destruction of lives and property that took place in the riots and the bomb blasts of ’92 and ’93. Because each time we blamed the others — the political parties, religious leaders, the state — we also conveniently absolved and erased ourselves from the acts of violence. We had our choices, but we relished in repeating our mistakes. We created our own monsters. We nurtured them, fattened them, until, in the process of getting itself destroyed, it alsoate us up. Historical amnesia is a fatal epidemic. The more we forget, the more number of times will we have such events of violence to remind us, that history is like a smartly dressed salesperson, with a chequered tie and a trained smile, ringing at our doorbell. The more number of times we say no, at the doorbell, the more number of times will this person reappear at our door, with the same product repackaged in colours, other than purple.