COLUMN: Tunnel of Time
By Shevlin Sebastian
I remember the day my friend Supratim revealed to me a hidden aspect of himself. It was a Saturday evening, sometime in 1992. We were sitting on a bench in the Park Circus Maidan in Kolkata.
A fresh summer breeze was blowing. The leaves swayed in the trees, making a soothing, rustling sound.
It was in this tranquil environment that Supratim started. “I hate the Muslims. They just keep on having kids. They should be forced to practise family planning. The political parties have molly-coddled them for too long. These Muslims have to be taught a lesson. It's so unpatriotic that when Pakistan wins a cricket match against India, they set off fireworks in our area. They should all be deported to Pakistan.”
I just stared at Supratim, my friend. I had known him for over 25 years. He was my only childhood friend. He is a Hindu and I am a Christian, but this had never made a difference between us, nor had he ever spoken like this before.
Supratim then pressed the knife into me: “Even you Christians behave no differently. In the name of social service, you go about converting people all over the place. In the North-East, thousands of Hindus have been converted to Christianity. This is just not right.”
Supratim's face was twisted by a peculiar, violent rage. His eyes had become blood-red. I was mesmerised by the hatred on his face, but somehow, I managed to say, “Supratim, how can you generalise? How can you say all Muslims are unpatriotic? After all, there are many Indian Muslims in key positions, even in the ministry of defence. What about our friend Zafar? Is he unpatriotic? We've watched cricket matches together. You know that he is an ardent fan of the Indian team.”
I paused then quickly rushed on. “As for conversions by Christians... you have known me for years. Do I go about converting people? I don't deny there are conversions, but as far as I know, it is not forced. Most convert because of poverty, in the hope of getting better social benefits or simply because they are convinced it is a good religion. I don't deny that there are Christian zealots, just as there are Muslim and Hindu zealots. Every religion has its bigots. But it's unfair to categorise every believer as fanatics.”
Supratim looked at me without blinking his eyes. “The appeasement of Muslims and other minorities has to be stopped completely,” he said in a hard voice.
They chilled me, these statements of his, because he had been, for me, the quintessential cultured Hindu: broad-minded, tolerant and compassionate. But now to see this fine-looking man twisted by intolerance was too much to bear. I was suddenly scared. I wondered what was going to happen to us non-Hindus. Would we continue to have a place under the Indian sun?
For months Supratim raged on about the appeasement of the Muslims and other minorities. These conversations created a nick in my soul. I began to bleed a little. It was all so surprising. We had had such an intuitive sympathy before. We had studied in the same schools and colleges. We had the same liberal education. We believed in human rights and justice. We believed in the primacy of law and the democratic right of people to choose whatever government they wanted.
We had deeply cherished the wonderful richness of our pluralistic society. Each state was like a country; so different and fascinating were the customs, the culture, the language, the behaviour. But now Supratim had totally switched over to the fundamentalist track. Where before two people had a perfect understanding, now I was a little wary and reserved.
The Babri Masjid, a mosque in Ayodhya built in the early 16th century by the Mughal emperor Babur, stood on a site traditionally identified by Hindus as the birthplace of Lord Rama. The site had long been a source of contention between Hindus and Muslims.
On December 6, 1992, a crowd of Hindu fundamentalists tore down the mosque in a few hours, against the orders of the Supreme Court. The ensuing rioting that swept across India left over 1,000 people dead.
Supratim went into shock. He said that the BJP (India's Hindu fundamentalist party, which lost its ruling coalition majority in the Indian Parliament in April) should not have disobeyed the highest law in the land. He said that it showed them in a poor light.
I was too numb to say anything. We went through the horror of riots in our Park Circus area. I could see that Supratim was also getting dazed like me.
But later, after normality had returned to the city, Supratim remained rabid. “Hindu power” was how he described the demolition. He had not changed at all. Inevitably, his Muslim friends, including Zafar, wandered away from him. He could also see my fears, mostly unexpressed, writ large on my face...
Over six years have passed since then. Supratim and I are still friends. Childhood friendship, as we all know, dies hard. There are too many memories and too many years of affection between us. But today there is anguish, a deep, intense, persistent pain whenever I think of my friendship with Supratim. Just as Indira Gandhi told her biographer Pupul Jayakar after her son Sanjay's premature death: “One can overcome hate, envy, greed and other such negative and self-destroying emotions. But sorrow is something else. It can never be forgotten or overcome. One has to learn to live with it, to absorb it into one's being, as a part of life.”
(Published in the Messenger of St. Anthony, Italy, June 1999)
