Daily Fix

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Maidan

T. SHER SINGH

Patna is a microcosm of India, with both the best of India, and the worst.

The best? Bihar, the state of which Patna is the capital, is the land that gave the world Buddha and Ashok and Mahavir and Guru Gobind Singh. Many of the characters from the Mahabharat and Ramayan gambolled here.

The worst? Lallu Prasad Yadav. Need one say more? He captures all that is rotten and despicable about the country today.

Sadly, there is far more of the latter and less of the former, in both modern-day India and Bihar. [A caveat: the word ’modern’ is used with an excess of generosity.]

All that is abhorrent in Lallu Prasad is to be found in Narendra Modi and Rahul Gandhi, the two wannabe leaders of the country. The only difference is that the latter two hide their greed and corruption much better, the first behind ever-changing designer clothes and carefully manicured media images, the second in that he can speak English better, is not uncouth, and belongs to a clan which has been in the business for several generations. 

Therefore, it is to places like Patna that one needs to turn to get a feel for the real India today, and not in the stock-market in Mumbai or the political theatre in New Delhi.
 
I know Patna well. I was born and brought up there; did my entire schooling, up till the two-year stint towards a Master’s degree in English … before my family and I had the good fortune of being able to immigrate to Canada.

I have visited Patna a few times during the intervening four decades, the last time being a mere 5 or so years ago. Nothing has changed in either Patna, Bihar or India … except in that they are wealthier and more poverty-ridden, more corrupt, more polluted, more anarchic. And all heading to hell in a hand basket at a faster pace than ever.

I can say with some confidence that I understand Patna and Bihar, and for that matter, India, all too well as a result. I know their inner workings, and the way the wheels turn in the minds of those who live and work and plunder there.

It was therefore with some natural curiosity that I once again took a close look at Patna as it was announced in the Indian media that Narendra Modi and the BJP party was banking on a visit to the provincial capital for a major boost to their electoral fortunes.

Though a backwater in so many ways, and deservedly so, both Patna and Bihar have played pivotal roles in the destiny of India throughout history, including in the recent past. More so the actual venue where Modi and his cohorts were scheduled to address the multitudes.

Popularly known as the Gandhi Maidan (grounds), a journalist, Pooja Kashyap, encapsulates some of its history thus:

Lively and ticking whole day long, the sprawling Gandhi Maidan, which used to be known as the Patna Lawns or Bankipore Maidan in pre-independence days, is that part of the city that never sleeps. It has long been witness to historic events, some cherished, some long forgotten.

In recent times, from melas, exhibitions, theatre festivals, book fairs to political rallies, it's been the centre-stage of activities. It can best be described as a home for paupers, a bazaar for vendors, a haven for lovers, a haunt for revellers, a playground for sports lovers, a hope for beggars and a den for drug peddlers.

During the British era, the maidan was a centre for polo sports, and hardly any political rallies were allowed here. But during the Indian freedom struggle, several movements, including the Champaran Movement and the Quit India Movement, were launched in Bihar from this Maidan.

In 1938, the Muslim League was revived from this historic ground, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the then president of the league, delivering a strident speech against the Congress from this platform.

After the formation of Forward Bloc (1939), Subhas Chandra Bose's speech here invited the wrath of Congressmen, who hurled stones and shoes at him. He is said to have gathered these in his shawl and later met Rajendra Prasad at Sadaquat Ashram …

Years later, as a young boy growing up in the capital, I stood amongst the multitudes who filled up the sprawling grounds -- which had by then been renamed the Gandhi Maidan -- to hear live the likes of Rajendra Prasad (the First President of India) and Radhakrishnan (the second), and Nehru and Shastri and Zakir Hussain.  And, yes, Indira Gandhi too, as well as her political nemesis, Jayaprakash Narayan.

It was on its periphery, I recall vividly, that I sat on a rickshaw -- I would’ve been in Grade One or so then -- waiting for a street-blockade to be lifted, and saw the police lathi-charge a student protest, and then lose patience and fire on the crowd, killing the student leader. His name -- Dinanath Pandey -- remains seared upon my memory.

The Maidan has been the site of many a riot and protest and associated general mayhem through its century of history, and political rallies galore. Lord knows, I have witnessed so many of them … it was the biggest show in town when I was growing up, and public violence in India is, I’m afraid, a spectator sport.
   
It was to this very Gandhi Maidan that Narendra Modi made a much heralded and advertised beeline on Sunday, October 27, 2013 to address a typical crowd of over 300,000 hoping to wow them with his hourly costume changes, and his equally colourful media bites.

I have followed it closely through the media, expecting it to be replete with drama and theatrics. I wasn’t disappointed: it offered a telling vignette on what is happening in India today.

Here’s how the day and its aftermath unfolded -- not unlike, I might add, so many I had personally witnessed half-a-century ago. It’s as if a template had been forged once and had become the matrix for all future events.  

The speech by Narendra Modi was scheduled for the evening.

Throughout the day, a series of homemade bombs exploded around town. There were a total of ten -- two of them found unexploded. In a park, near a cinema (Elphinstone, at one end of the Maidan, where I once caught The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur). Some exploded on the Maidan itself, amidst the crowds.

It didn’t deter the crowds. If anything, it helped the undecided both in the countryside and within the city to head to the 63-acre Maidan, known as the ‘lungs of the city’ because of its unbroken, open-air circle: after all, it’s not everyday you get to see a riot and a bombing, even in Bihar. They came on foot, and on tongas, rickshaws, scooters, tempos, fattfattias. And on buses and trains … all free for the day.

The vehicular traffic stops miles from the Maidan because the roads are jammed, human shoulder to shoulder with pedestrians marching in the same direction. No, I wasn’t there, but I can visualize the exact scene in my mind’s eye.

If there’s one thing Indians are disciplined and well-behaved for, it is while finding their way single-mindedly to a riot.

The Maidan filled up until you couldn’t stuff another person into the grounds, or anywhere on the road that rings around it. There are loud-speakers everywhere. Several waves of the same words echo all around you. It is impossible to make any sense of who is speaking and what he is saying. But the men -- it’s mostly men, of course; remember this is not a country friendly to women!  -- don’t care. It’s the sensurround experience for which they are here.

And the explosions in the Maidan provide the experience.

The speakers continue.

Shortly before Modi arrives, there’s a lot of enhanced activity. Word shoots through the crowd that a bomb has been found right under the podium he’s to speak from, and has been diffused.

Modi turns up … how brave of him, the crowd whispers! -- and speaks for an hour. Not a word about the bombings. BJP speaker after speaker, before and after, have assured the crowd that the bombs are nothing to worry about. The 300,000 and more who have gathered there do not worry or panic; they’ve seen worse.

Ultimately, seven people will have died from the blasts, some of them on the maidan itself, amidst the crowd. And 83 injured. That’s nothing, really. Life is cheap in India, and such casualties are mere human fodder -- nothing more serious than that -- in the perennial election cycle (it’s unending duration not unlike its American counterpart).

And then, the miracle.

You know it’s a miracle if you know anything about the police and the so-called ’security’ and ’intelligence’ agencies in India. Yes, hours after Modi has left the field, having expressed his condolences for the victims, a prime suspect for the bombings is caught. And five other accomplices are rounded up with the deftness and efficiency normally attributed to Arthur Conan Doyle‘s fiction.

And guess what! It’s the FOREIGN HAND!

Everything that goes wrong in India is because of the ‘foreign hand’. Which is code for ’Pakistan’ and the Muslim minority.

So, not surprisingly, all the six suspects are Muslim; they belong -- as revealed by the brilliant police work -- to a Pakistani terrorist group.

And, here’s the clincher.

The purported leader of the suspects -- a certain ‘Ainul alias Tarique’ -- finds himself suddenly dead. A full day after he is taken into police custody.

You didn’t see that one coming, did you?

Well, I did. I’ll explain later, how and why.

[Just remember how conveniently Oswald suddenly found himself dead while in police custody, shortly after he purportedly killed Kennedy. And how conveniently Beant Singh suddenly found himself dead AFTER he was taken into police custody after he had, purportedly, killed Indira Gandhi only minutes earlier. With the prime suspects dead, the case is solved. And closed. No need to look for anyone else!]

Now that the ‘suspects’ are safely in custody, and their leader safely dead, how’s the investigation going?

Two days AFTER the bombings -- and I swear I‘m not making this up; this is from an actual news report -- Senior Superintendent of Police Manu Maharaj announces that ‘a suspicious object was today found in Gandhi Maidan, venue of the BJP's Hunkar Rally that bore the brunt of Sunday's serial blasts …”

It was "recovered from a footpath used by morning walkers in Gandhi Maidan."

So, pray, what is this ’object’ you have found, Sir?

"We are trying to find out as to what the object is," replies the Senior Superintendent of police. That is, they claim they have 'something', but they have no clue what it is.

They have since proceeded to cordon off the area and a police team along with a Bomb Disposal Squad has been ‘rushed to the spot‘.

Two days AFTER the bombings? AFTER they found the ’suspicious object’?

*   *   *   *   *

I am not privy to any special information about the ‘Patna Bombings‘ -- the nomenclature under which they are now being touted in BJP and Modi propaganda. “It’s our 9/11“, his supporters are already saying.

Who knows what the truth is, or whether we will ever find out?

But we do know how Modi’s crowd and the BJP and their close-associates, the RSS, behave. We have the benefit of knowing their proven and oft demonstrated pattern of behaviour. And we know what happened in the recent ‘riots’ in Muzzafarnagar where they’ve been clearly implicated -- and charged! -- for stirring up yet another massacre. Where 43 died, 93 were injured.

Exactly two months earlier, to the day. 

So, let’s conjecture … by adding ‘2-and-2’ to see if we can arrive at ’4’.

The tools we have at our disposal are the following:

Past behaviour of Modi, the BJP and their cohorts. Recent and historic.

Knowledge of how things work in Patna and Bihar and India.

Common sense.

Not enough, by themselves, to convict anyone in a court of law, but sufficient to give us a clear idea of what’s going on in India today.    

So let me weave a web for you as to what I think happened. Again, I have no proof, and I am not putting this forth as factual. Merely as a theory. Label it nonsense if you wish.

*   *   *   *   *

In Patna, Bihar and India, you can hire someone to do anything … for a few pieces of silver. And, I kid you not, it's easier to arrange a riot-planner than to engage a wedding planner. And cheaper. You can get veteran bombers too … who will not only do the deed ... precisely how, where and when you need it done, but for the right fee will also publicly take the blame and serve a jail term as well. If a perpetrator dies in the process, the price goes up, and the enhanced fee goes to the family. Bails, lawyers, bribes, pay-offs and pay-outs, fines ... all are mysteriously taken care of by benefactors who remain -- always -- in the background, protected by larger political interests.

You can get a Muslim bomber or a Hindu one. Or one belonging to any caste that the situation demands.

In this case, the bombings had a number of benefits.

They made Modi look important. In danger. And therefore, heroic.

It gives him instant ammunition to attack his incumbent opponents, and to deflect public dialogue from his own crimes and misdeeds. 

He gets to comfort the victims too. It makes you look like a statesman in a country where, as a rule, no one cares.

At the same time, the local state government looks bad, since it is given the blame for lack of security. This is specially opportune. Why? Because the local Chief Minister and government have gone public in opposing Modi’s candidacy. So, you get to kill two birds with one … bomb.

The fact that Muslims and Pakistan get the overall blame only adds to Modi’s and the BJP’s and the RSS’ self-proclaimed platform and agenda.

Thus, a few bombings strategically placed, and you can weave any narrative to suit your election campaign nowadays. Just throw in the word “terrorists” in every gasp and breath, and you’re laughing all the way to the polls. The words ‘Muslim’ and ‘Pakistan’ provide added fuel to the fire.

Who hired and paid the bombers? Who planned the operation? Who implemented it? Who benefited from it? These are questions that will not be asked by the hundreds of millions of lemmings who make up India’s so-called democracy today. A mere week has gone by. Check out the Indian media … you’ll find nary a mention of the entire operation.

The Indian media is not in the business of making such waves. 

But it does quote Mr Modi and the BJP/RSS crowd profusely, as they make hay from the incident, crying themselves hoarse over the need to change the governments (in their favour!) to right all that is wrong with the country!      

There’s a reason why it’s called Goonda Raj -- the name given to the governance that succeeded the British Raj.

The Rule of Scoundrels.

It deserves a musical and an opera of its own.

Call it: “A Funny Thing Happened on The Way to the Maidan.“ Zero Mostel could play the role of Narendra Modi …

November 5, 2013

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