Delhi 2020: A Reflection on Violence and Vulnerability

Delhi is burning or at least large parts of the metropolis were throughout this week. The entire country knows that. It was in the newspapers, on online news portals, on social media and most definitely on an infinite loop on TV news. I try to stay away from sources that give news updates by the minute. What I see and get to know is more than enough to bear. That photograph of a young man in a red sweater striding down a barricaded road, pointing a pistol at someone, completely oblivious of the presence of a policeman close to him, is going to haunt me for a while. It reminded me of a picture of a young man in a blue windcheater with a gun at VT station more than a decade ago. The horrifying aspect of both those pictures was the ease with which arms invaded the frame of a routine day. They suggested that there is no way one can absolutely avoid straying into a dangerously violent incident. I admit that I try to emulate the proverbial ostrich, yet, I live in Delhi, in 2020 and I am intensely affected by the sudden volcanic eruption of violence in many pockets of the metropolis.

Through two decades of active engagement with Delhi, I have arrived upon the belief that regular letting out of violent emotions in small bursts– through callous stereotyping, cuss words, everyday misogynistic acts, and regular road rage – ensures that the quotient of latent violence remains low in this city. Violence is framed by the quotidian out here, making it one of the various aspects of its unique culture. There are some wonderful aspects too that make Delhi’s culture unique. Some of those are vivaciousness, generosity in actions, emotional reactions to practical acts, confident pragmatism and a true appreciation of leisure. It is almost as if Delhiwallahs are singing along with that young person who’s energetically advising, “Duniya mein aayein hai to love kar le, thoda sa jee le, thoda mar le”, probably conflating “love” in that line with “live”. A full blooded plunging into living life, the way Delhiwallahs know best would necessarily involve navigating through violence and making peace every day. When violent thoughts and emotions get dissipated every single day, there is no scope for bottling it up for it to explode.

Living in Delhi never seemed like living on a volcanic mountain.

I know that I live on shifting tectonic plates. Every time I ‘imagine’ I felt an earthquake, I quickly get to know within hours that the plates did shift and that there was an earthquake in Afghanistan or Nepal or at some other place thousands of miles away. Mostly this information reaches me through calls from family and friends outside Delhi, enquiring about my safety. These calls also tell me that when these people hear some unusually threatening news about Delhi, they think of me. And to think that I didn’t get a single call regarding my safety in the past week! A series of volcanic eruptions of violence and, aside from my parents, not one person I know and care for wants to know whether I stayed out of the scalding lava! Either I have been completely forgotten by all who care for me or they don’t think that this large scale violence was ever a threat to me. Being confident that it is not the former, based on other kinds of evidence, I am inferring that it is the latter – they don’t think I am in danger. That is a rather disturbing thought! How can anyone think that a person who lives and works in Delhi is not at risk when there is a riot situation? Did we not make frantic calls to friends and family during the Mumbai terror attacks in 2009? Did we not queue up outside STD phone booths to get across to friends and family in Bombay in 1993? Did we not worry, across the country, about the lives of even absolute strangers in 1984? Didn’t we shudder in horror at the thought of all those people stranded outside the safety of their homes during all these violent disturbances? How, then, is this different? Why are people not panicking about their family and friends in Delhi?

People who care for me would think that I am sure to be safe when they absolutely know that I am not part of the demographic which will be affected by the violence. Although they live outside Delhi and their palmtops are buzzing with news and images of a burning Delhi, they are quite sure that I am not a target of this violence. Clearly, people outside Delhi understand that there are specific targets for this violence; a random denizen of Delhi is not a target. None of my Delhi friends have shared with me that they are getting frantic phone calls asking them to stay safe. Middle class India seems to be quite clear about the target of this violence. It is not a middle class person – man or woman – who also has a Hindu name. It is not people who are protesting against a bill – those protests have been going on for weeks now and it’s been business as usual in Delhi. A look at the names of the people who died in the violence reveals that one out of three dead has a Muslim name. Middle class Hindus located outside Delhi revealed through their nonchalance that they knew the targeted demographic of this violence on the very first day it erupted. It took three days of observation, reflection and theorization for intellectuals and activists in Delhi to reach a realization that the rest of the country already, almost instinctively, understood.

We, Delhiwallahs, didn’t realize something the rest of the country seemed to have known all along. We are confused. We don’t understand large scale violence because we navigate through small provocations of violence each day, cobble together some sort of peace and go through the day. We do, sometimes, hold protests at India Gate or Jantar Mantar. Some of these protests lead to volatile situations that are swiftly handled by the machinery of the state. We see that Shaheen Bagh was different from most other Delhi protests. The protesters are right there in the middle of the city, for us to notice. We just skirted around, if we were not drawn to join them. We have witnessed many instances of communal clashes and have handled the trauma and destruction they cause. But we have never before seen a chain reaction of localized volcanic violence co-existing with large chunks of the metropolis living through a regular Delhi day, with its minor outbursts of completely manageable miniscule violence. We don’t know how to make sense of this cognitive dissonance. It leaves us helpless at an emotional and intellectual level. We summon our pragmatism, confidence and generosity to see ourselves through this incomprehensible situation because we cannot let Delhi burn. We are doing our best to douse the fires but to piece back some sense of normalcy we also need to ask ourselves why Delhi is burning and courageously face the answers to that question.