His congregation was tense already. It was with dismay that many Muslims in Brahmpur had, over the months, seen the foundations of the temple rising in the plot to the west of their mosque. Now, after the first part of the prayers, the Imam gave his audience the most stirring and inflammatory speech he had given in years, very far removed from his ordinary sermon on personal morality or cleanliness or alms or piety. His grief and frustration as much as their own bitter anxiety called for something stronger. Their religion was in danger. The barbarians were at the gates. They prayed, these infidels, to their pictures and stones and perpetuated themselves in ignorance and sin. Let them do what they wanted to in their dens of filth. But God could see what was happening now. They had brought their beastliness near the very precincts of the mosque itself. The land that the kafirs sought to build on — why sought? were at this very moment building on — was disputed land — disputed in God’s eyes and in man’s eyes — but not in the eyes of animals who spent their time blowing conches and worshipping parts of the body whose very names it was shameful to mention. Did the people of the faith gathered here in God’s presence know how it was planned to consecrate this Shiva-linga? Naked ash-smeared savages would dance before it — naked! These were the shameless, like the people of Sodom, who mocked at the power of the All-Merciful.
. . God guides not the people
of the unbelievers.
Those — God has set a seal on their
hearts, and their hearing, and their eyes,
and those — they are the heedless ones;
Without a doubt, in the world to come they
will be the losers.
They worshipped their hundreds of idols that they claimed were divine — idols with four heads and five heads and the heads of elephants — and now the infidels who held power in the land wanted Muslims, when they turned their faces westwards in prayer to the Kaaba, to face these same idols and these same obscene objects with their heads bowed. ‘But,’ continued the Imam, ‘we who have lived through hard and bitter times and have suffered for our faith and paid for our faith in blood need only remember the fate of the idolaters:
And they set up compeers to God, that
they might lead astray from His way.
Say: “Take your joy! Your homecoming
shall be — the Fire!”’
A slow, attentive, shocked expectation filled the silence that followed.
‘But even now,’ cried the Imam in renewed frenzy, half-gasping for air, ‘even as I speak — they could be hatching their designs to prevent our evening devotion by blowing their conches to drown out the call to prayer. Ignorant they may be, but they are full of guile. They are already getting rid of Muslims in the police force so that the community of God will be left defenceless. Then they can attack and enslave us. Now it is too clear to us that we are living not in a land of protection but a land of enmity. We have appealed for justice, and have been kicked down at the very doors where we have gone pleading. The Home Minister himself supports this temple committee — and its guiding spirit is the debauched buffalo of Marh! Let it not happen that our holy places are to be polluted by the proximity of filth — let it not happen — but what can save us now that we are left defenceless before the sword of our enemies in the land of the Hindus, what can save us but our own efforts, our own’—here he struggled for breath and emphasis again—‘our own direct action — to protect ourselves. And not just ourselves, not just our families but these few feet of paved earth that have been given to us for centuries, where we have unrolled our mats and raised our hands in tears to the All-Powerful, which are worn smooth by the devotions of our ancestors and ourselves and — if God so wills — will so be by our descendants also. But have no fear, God does so will, have no fear, God will be with you:
Hast thou not seen how thy Lord did with Ad,
Iram of the pillars,
the like of which was never created in the land,
and Thamood, who hollowed the rocks in the valley,
and Pharaoh, he of the tent-pegs,
who all were insolent in the land
and worked much corruption therein?
Thy Lord unloosed on them a scourge of chastisement;
surely thy Lord is ever on the watch.
O God, help those who help the religion of the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon Him. May we also do the same. Make those weak, who weaken the religion of Muhammad. Praise be to God, the Lord of all Being.’
The plump Imam descended from the pulpit, and led the people in more prayer.
That evening there was a riot.
5.3
Because of the instructions of the Home Minister, the greater part of the police was stationed at sensitive points in Misri Mandi. There were only about fifteen policemen left in the main police station in Chowk by evening. As the call for prayer from the Alamgiri Mosque trembled across the evening sky, by some unfortunate chance or possibly intentional provocation, the sound of a conch was heard interrupting it several times. Normally such a thing might have been angrily shrugged off, but not today.
No one knew how the men who were gathering in the narrow alleys of the Muslim neighbourhood that lay on one side of Chowk became a mob. One moment they were walking individually or in small groups through the alleys towards the mosque for evening prayer, then they had coalesced into larger clusters, excitedly discussing the ominous signals they had heard. After the midday sermon most were in no mood to listen to any voice of moderation. A couple of the more eager members of the Alamgiri Masjid Hifaazat Committee made a few crowd-rousing remarks, a few local hotheads and toughs stirred themselves and those around them into a state of rage, the crowd increased in size as the alleys joined into larger alleys, its density and speed and sense of indistinct determination increased, and it was no longer a collection but a thing — wounded and enraged, and wanting nothing less than to wound and enrage. There were cries of ‘Allah-u-Akbar’ which could be heard all the way to the police station. A few of those who joined the crowd had sticks in their hands. One or two even had knives. Now it was not the mosque that they were headed for but the partly constructed temple just next to it. It was from here that the blasphemy had originated, it was this that must be destroyed.
Since the Superintendent of Police of the district was occupied in Misri Mandi, the young District Magistrate, Krishan Dayal, had himself gone to the tall pink edifice of the main police station about an hour earlier to ensure that things would remain stable in the Chowk area. He feared the increased tension that Friday often brought. When he heard about the Imam’s sermon, he asked the kotwal — as the Deputy Superintendent of Police for the City was called — what he planned to do to protect the area.
The kotwal of Brahmpur, however, was a lazy man who wanted nothing better than to be left alone to take his bribes in peace.
‘There will be no trouble, Sir, believe me,’ he assured the District Magistrate. ‘Agarwal Sahib himself has phoned me. Now he tells me I am to go to Misri Mandi to join the SP — so I must be off, Sir, with your leave, of course.’ And he bustled off in a preoccupied sort of way, taking two other lower officers with him, and leaving the kotwali virtually in the charge of a head constable. ‘I will just be sending the Inspector back,’ he said in a reassuring manner. ‘You should not stay, Sir,’ he added ingratiatingly. ‘It is late. This is a peaceful time. After the previous troubles at the mosque we have defused the situation, I am glad to say.’