Is anyone listening?

A little crowd quickly gathered. We had to say little as the people in the crowd surrounded the boy and began haranguing him. Gayatri Devi was the most eloquent. “Who told you where Ram was born?” she asked him. “Did you speak to his mother? Just because someone tells you Babar broke a temple and built a mosque, you believe him and start breaking the mosque. Can you compensate the wrongs done in the past by doing wrongs in the present?”

“Who died in Ayodhya?” asked the man from Orissa. “Did you see any leaders dying? No, it was you poor Ram Bhakts who spilt your blood. When will you learn that they are using you to fight their political battles?” The episode ended when the young man ran to board a waiting bus but many in the group joined us. This has happened every day — people stop to watch or read our leaflet, then join us.

Some, like Gayatri Devi, have become regulars, coming each day to sit for a while and listen to the readings from Faiz and Dushyant Kumar, join in the singing or just talk to us. They share our awareness of helplessness and frustration, but they all agree that we should act. “When Singhal fasts for even a day, the prime minister goes to beg him to eat. But is he concerned about so many citizens fasting here? You have to shout louder — loud enough to shake his chair,” says one.

“The problem is that you only react when something happens,” says Phulchand Bhai, an elderly Gandhian who is the pradhan of a village near Mathura. “If the VHP can mobilise an army to loot and kill, why can’t you mobilise an army for peace?” We have been telling people how the police denied us permission to sit on dharna at the Mandi House roundabout as we had originally planned. They have all shared our anger and outrage at the irony of this — in a city where hoodlums have the free run of every public place, a group of citizens cannot protest peacefully in a place of their choice!

Another common factor is the complete distrust of politicians and political parties shared by people across classes and backgrounds. Whether it is B.D. Sharma of the National Movement for Tribal Self-Rule or a maulvi from a little village in Arrah district, they are convinced that politicians are all complicit in the denial of voice and rights to ordinary citizens.

Sharmaji quoted a friend of his — an angootha-chaap pandit — who advised a BJP leader to look after the derelict Hanuman temple in his own village before building another temple in Ayodhya. The Maulvi Sahab condemned the government for destroying the country by dealing differently with different communities. “The country is like a garden,” he said in Bhojpuri. “The maali is supposed to water all the plants equally and see that no trees are cut down. Let us get rid of these useless maalis and take over the garden for ourselves before it is destroyed completely!”