Lajja Page 5

  ‘Hm.’

  ‘How come you’re not saying anything? Are you supporting it?’ asked Akhtarujjaman.

  ‘Why should I support it?’

  ‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’

  ‘Bad people have done something awful. What can I do except feel sad?’

  ‘To think that this happened in a secular state! Shame! Shame! All the positions taken by the state, all the political pronouncements, the Supreme Court, the Lok Sabha, the political parties, their democratic tradition—all these are but hollow words! Sudha babu, you have to admit that there have been many more riots in India; we’ve had very few in comparison.’

  ‘Hm. Yes, after 1964 the big riot was in 1990.’

  ‘It’s best to say 1950 and not ’64. The riots that happened after ’50 were characterized by a spontaneous resistance to communalism. Manik Miyan, Johur Hussain Chowdhury and Abdus Salam took the initiative to ensure that every newspaper had banner headlines saying “Resist, O East Pakistan!” The fifty-year-old Amir Hussain Chowdhury lost his life because he went to protect his Hindu neighbours. Poor man!’

  Sudhamoy felt the pain in his chest grow sharper. He lay down on his bed. A cup of hot tea would have revived him. But who would get him some tea? Kironmoyee was worried about Suronjon. He had gone out alone. It would have been better if he had gone with Hyder. Sudhamoy too was now infected by Kironmoyee’s anxiety. He knew that Suronjon had always been intensely emotional and that it wasn’t possible to keep him off the streets, yet he could not quell his worries with logic. He hid them deep inside and went back to what he had been discussing with Akhtarujjaman. ‘Apparently peace is the ultimate goal of all religions but even at the end of this century we continue to see how religion is the cause of much strife, bloodshed and disgrace among human beings. Nothing but the flag of religion can crush human beings and humane emotions so completely.’

  ‘Hm,’ said Akhtarujjaman.

  Kironmoyee came in carrying two cups of tea. ‘What’s the matter?’ she asked Sudhamoy. ‘Is it hurting? Is the pain more than before? Maybe you should take your sleeping pills.’ She put the cups down on the table and sat on the bed.

  ‘Boudi, you don’t wear conch-shell bangles and sindoor, do you?’ queried Akhtarujjaman.

  ‘No, not since 1975,’ said Kironmoyee, lowering her eyes.

  ‘That’s a relief! But be careful, all the same. One can never be too careful.’

  Kironmoyee smiled wanly. That smile found its way to Sudhamoy’s lips too. Akhtarujjaman drank his tea fast. Sudhamoy’s chest continued to hurt.

  ‘It’s been quite a while since I gave up wearing the dhoti,’ said Sudhamoy, ‘for the sake of dear life, my friend.’

  ‘Well, I’m off,’ said Akhtarujjaman as he put down his cup. ‘I’ll pop in on Binod babu too, I think.’

  Sudhamoy stretched taut on the bed. His cup of tea lay cooling, untouched on his bedside table. With the door bolted, Kironmoyee sat facing the light, shadows playing on her face. There was a time when Kironmoyee sang kirtans beautifully. She was the daughter of a well-known police officer of Brahmonbaria. She was married off at sixteen.

  ‘Sing Robindroshongeet, Kiron,’ Sudhamoy had said. ‘Let me find you a teacher.’

  She took lessons from Mithun Dey for a few years. She was invited to sing at various concerts in Mymensingh. Sudhamoy recalled that Kironmoyee had once been asked to sing at the Town Hall. Suronjon was then three or four years old. There were very few singers in the city then. Kironmoyee came on stage after Somir Chondro Dey. Sudhamoy was sitting in the front row and sweating because he was not sure how she would sing.

  Kironmoyee sang ‘Anandaloke mangalaloke birajo sotyo sundaro’. Let beauty and truth thrive in the land of well-being and happiness.

  ‘Once more, once more,’ screamed the audience.

  She sang:

  ‘Bhuvaneshwaro he, mochono koro bondhon shob mochono koro he

  Probhu mochon koro bhoy

  Shob doinyo koroho loy

  Nityo chokit chonchol chit koro nisonsoy.’

  O Lord of the Universe, relieve me of all bonds

  O Lord, relieve me of fear

  Take away all poverty

  Make my fickle and restless mind free of anxiety

  She sang her heart out and even an atheist like Sudhamoy felt his eyes fill with tears.

  After the Liberation, Kironmoyee was reluctant to sing in public. Sumita Naha and Mitali Mukherjee were scheduled to sing at a programme organized by Udichi, a cultural organization. Suronjon told his mother that he wanted her to sing as well.

  ‘I don’t practise any more and so my voice is no longer what it used to be.’ Kironmoyee laughed.

  ‘Please sing. What’s your problem?’ Sudhamoy asked. ‘You were quite a regular before. Many people know you. You’ve been applauded too once upon a time.’

  ‘Yes, I did get applause. The people who clapped were the ones who said that Hindu women have no sense of shame and that’s why they learn to sing. Then they show their bodies off in front of men.’

  ‘Don’t Muslim women sing?’ asked Sudhamoy, trying to calm her down.

  ‘They do now. However, earlier when they didn’t, we had to bear the taunts. Minoti di used to sing so well. One day she was caught by a gang of young men who accused her of planning to teach young Muslim women to sing.’

  ‘But teaching others to sing is a good thing to do,’ said Sudhamoy.

  ‘Those men said that Muslim women shouldn’t sing. Singing was a bad thing and girls would be ruined if they learnt to sing.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Kironmoyee had stopped paying attention to her singing.

  ‘Kiron, you had a good voice,’ Mithun Dey said often. ‘Pity you gave up singing.’

  ‘Dada, it’s hard. I began to wonder why I was singing. People didn’t approve of all this singing and dancing. They would malign us.’

  Finally Kironmoyee stopped singing. Sudhamoy did not insist on her continuing with her singing. But he’d say, ‘Even if you don’t sing in public, you can sing at home, can’t you?’

  However, that did not happen. Sometimes in the dark of the night, when they were feeling restless and were unable to sleep, they would both go to the terrace. Their hearts would bleed for the Brahmaputra and their home that they had left behind by the river. They would stare silently at a star in the distance. Kironmoyee would hum ‘Purano shei diner kotha bolbo ki re hay’, and listening to her sing ‘What shall I sing of the days gone by’, even someone like Sudhamoy, who was good at keeping his emotions in check, would feel unsettled. He too wanted to get back the playing fields of his childhood and adolescence, his schoolyard, the swelling waters of the river, and those walks by the riverside forests that took them to a world of dreams. The supposedly hard-hearted Sudhamoy would hold Kironmoyee in his arms at night and cry out loud.

  Sudhamoy’s pain had no boundaries. Jogonmoy Ghoshal, Prafullo Sarkar and Netai Sen were practically killed before his eyes in 1971. They would take them to the camps and shoot them and then pile the bodies in a truck and throw them in the killing fields the next day. Whenever the Pakistanis found a Hindu, they would arrest the person and begin by kicking the prisoner with booted feet, then stab him with bayonets, tear out his eyelids and break the bones in his back; despite all this, prisoners retained the hope of being released alive. In the end they were killed. Sudhamoy had seen many Muslim prisoners being released after beatings but he had never seen Hindus being let go.

  In the well in the sweepers’ colony, they had found corpses of Hindus and Muslims all heaped together. After the country was liberated, on the day that thousands and thousands of bones were dug out of the well, the relatives of Majed, Rahim, Idris and others had thrown themselves on those piles of bones and cried loudly. Was anyone able to say if a particular bone had been that of Majed and another of An
il?

  Sudhamoy’s broken leg had healed and so had three broken ribs; the wound of his sliced-off penis had healed too but the wounds deep inside were raw and his tears had not dried. Was staying alive something really significant? He was physically alive, yes, but Sudhamoy did not feel that his return from the camp was a return to the world of the living. He had lived in a bamboo hut for seven long months, calling himself Abdus Salam in Arjukhila village in Phulpur. Suronjon became Saber. And Sudhamoy cringed in shame when a roomful of people addressed Kironmoyee as Fatema. His broken ribs certainly hurt his chest, but the pain of Kironmoyee’s transformation to Fatema rankled much deeper.

  The soldiers of the Liberation, muktijoddhas, came to Phulpur in December and the whole village broke out into cries of ‘Joy Bangla’ and danced with joy. And Sudhamoy called out that beloved name that he had not been able to use during those long seven months.

  ‘Kiron, Kiron, Kironmoyee,’ he had called out, again and again.

  The fires of anguish that had burnt in him for so long were finally cooled. This was Sudhamoy’s ‘Joy Bangla’. It was the freedom to boldly call out Kironmoyee’s real name before thousands of people that signified ‘Joy Bangla’.

  Kironmoyee and Sudhamoy were startled by the harsh knocks on the door. Horipodo stood outside—Horipodo Bhattacharya. Sudhamoy’s pain had gone down a bit after he had placed a Nificard tablet under his tongue, closed his eyes and lain down.

  Sudhamoy sat up when he saw Horipodo.

  ‘Are you ill? You’re looking pale.’

  ‘Yes, Horipodo. I haven’t been well for a few days. I haven’t checked my blood pressure either.’

  ‘I would’ve brought my BP machine if only I’d known!’

  ‘Look at us! Suronjon decided to go out when things are like this!’ exclaimed Kironmoyee. ‘But how could you come?’

  ‘I took a shortcut. Avoided the main road.’

  No one spoke for some time.

  ‘In Dhaka today, they are protesting the destruction of the Babri Masjid,’ said Horipodo, as he took off his shawl. ‘There are peace marches too. The political parties and various other organizations have asked people to preserve communal harmony. The cabinet has appealed to the people to be restrained and tolerant. Sheikh Hasina too has said that communal harmony must be maintained at all costs. Two hundred and twenty-three people have died in riots in India. There’s curfew in forty towns. The communal groups have been banned and Narasimha Rao has vowed that the Babri Masjid will be rebuilt.’

  After saying all this, Horipodo sat with a sombre expression.

  ‘Have you taken any decisions? Will you continue to stay here?’ he asked. ‘I don’t think it’s wise to stay here. I’d thought of going to my in-laws’ at Manikganj. However, my eldest brother-in-law came here this morning and said that nearly a hundred houses have been pillaged and burnt in the Manikganj and Ghior thana areas. Twenty-five

  temples were burnt down, and also the Hindu houses in Bokjhuri village. And Deben Shor’s daughter Saraswati was dragged out of their house by a gang of eight or ten men and raped.’

  ‘What are you saying?’ yelled Sudhamoy.

  ‘Where’s your daughter?’

  ‘Maya has gone to a friend’s house.’

  ‘Muslims, I hope.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said Horipodo with a sigh of relief.

  Kironmoyee felt relieved too.

  ‘Actually, it’s just here that we have riots and tension,’ Sudhamoy said, as he polished his glasses. ‘I’d never seen riots in Mymensingh. Horipodo, have you heard about anything going wrong in our Mymensingh?’

  ‘I heard that last night in the village of Bathuadi in the Phulpur thana, they burnt two temples, and also the place for community festivals. In Trishal they’ve destroyed a Kali temple.’

  ‘Well, surely there are no disturbances in the city. There’s very little of such stuff going on in the northern parts of our country. In our parts, Kironmoyee, have we ever heard of instances of temples being burnt?’

  ‘The office for the community Durga Puja in North Brook Hall Road, the image of the goddess Kali in the house of the zamindars, and the temple have all been destroyed. Today they have ravaged the Jolkhabar sweet shop in Shantinagar, and the Shatarupa store, and set fire to them. In the dead of the night, men from the Jamaat camp destroyed six temples in Kushtia. And the news from Chittagong, Sylhet, Bhola, Sherpur, Cox’s Bazar and Noakhali is making me very afraid.’

  ‘What are you afraid of?’ asked Sudhamoy.

  ‘An exodus.’

  ‘Oh no, we will never have that kind of a riot in this country.’

  ‘Don’t you remember 1990, Dada? Or didn’t you find that significant?’

  ‘That was an event staged by the Ershad government.’

  ‘How can you possibly say that, Dada! Please look at the data of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics. The exodus this time will be terrible. People don’t leave their homeland simply because governments stage events. One’s native land is not like the soil we put in flowerpots, where we pour water and fertilizer and then change the soil after an interval. Dada, I’m scared. My son is studying in Calcutta. My daughters are both here. They are not children but young women. I spend sleepless nights worrying about them. I think we’ll leave.’

  Sudhamoy was stung. ‘Are you crazy, Horipodo?’ he said, as he whipped his glasses off his face. ‘Never ever say such inauspicious things.’

  ‘Yes, I have a good practice. I’m making enough money. I have my own house. That’s what you’ll tell me, right?’

  ‘No, Horipodo, that’s not it. Because you have some facilities and advantages here doesn’t mean you can’t think of leaving. And even if you didn’t have any, why would that automatically mean that you had to leave? Isn’t this your country?

  ‘I’m retired now. I no longer have a regular salary. My son doesn’t have a job either. I run my family with the money I earn from my patients’ fees. The number of patients I have is dwindling. But does all this mean I should leave? Are they human—the people who leave their country? Never mind what happens, however many riots there are, Bengalis are not a savage people. There’s some commotion now but it’ll stop.

  ‘These are two countries situated side by side. Obviously fire in one country will singe the other somewhat. Remember Horipodo, that the riots of 1964 were not instigated by Bengali Muslims. They were started by the Biharis.’

  ‘I am wrapping myself in this shawl and hiding my face,’ said Horipodo, as he wrapped the shawl around himself. ‘It is not because I’m afraid of the Biharis. Dada, I’m terrified of your Bengali brethren.’

  Horipodo let himself out gently and then disappeared down the lane on the left. Kiron kept the door open slightly and grew restless waiting for Suronjon. Every so often there were processions that went past shouting the slogan ‘Naraye takbeer Allah ho Akbar’. The slogan-shouting crowds demanded that never mind what it took, the Government of India must rebuild the Babri Masjid, otherwise there would be mayhem.

  Suronjon was unsteady on his feet when he came home very late at night. He told Kironmoyee that he was not hungry and did not want any dinner.

  Three

  Suronjon turned the lights off and went to bed. However, he could not fall asleep easily. Feeling restless, he kept tossing and turning. Since he could not sleep, the past kept coming back to him. This nation was founded on four main principles—nationalism, neutrality towards all religions, democracy and socialism. Beginning with the language movement of 1952 there was a long period of democratic struggles that culminated in the Liberation War and led to the defeat of the forces of communalism and fundamentalism.

  When the groups that had been opposed to the principles and sensibilities of the Liberation War managed to grab power in the country and change the character of the Constitution, the communal and fundamen
talist groups that had been defeated and decimated during the Liberation War were rehabilitated. The awful strategy of using religion as a political weapon was adopted and Islam was made the state religion in an illegitimate and unconstitutional way and soon after, the communal and the fundamentalist powers became very active and alert.

  On 8 February 1979, very early in the morning, those belonging to the Hindu Rishi sect in Sabahon village in the Daudkandi sub-district of Comilla were attacked by a mob of nearly four hundred people from nearby villages.

  ‘The government has declared that Islam is the state religion. If you want to stay in an Islamic country all of you must become Muslims. If you don’t become Muslims you will have to run away from this country,’ they shouted.

  These men addressed the Rishi folk using the disrespectful tui form and they ransacked their houses, burnt them down, razed temples to the ground, kidnapped many of them, some of whom are still missing. Many of the women were raped. There are many who still bear serious injuries from these attacks.

  In Abirdia village, in the sub-district of Shibpur in Norsinghdi , Nripendro Kumar Sengupta and his wife, Onima Sengupta, were held captive in the house of an advocate and forced to write off eight and a half bighas of their land. On 27 March 1979, Onima wrote to the superintendent of police saying that the culprits had frightened her and the neighbours too were very frightened and could not protest. As a result of her complaint, Onima was imprisoned for three or four days and tortured.

  Later in 1979, on 27 May, about ten or twelve armed men attacked the Haldar house in Baulkanda village in the Kaukhali sub-district of Pirojpur. They plundered the house and destroyed the temple.

  ‘Kill the infidels, break temples and make mosques,’ they shouted. They also added that all Hindus should leave the country as soon as possible.

  On the afternoon of 9 May, about a hundred or hundred and fifty Muslims went on a rampage—bombing, burning and shooting—in the house of the Baidyas in Gaschi village in the Raujan sub-district of Chittagong.

  On 16 June, eight or ten policemen caught hold of fifteen or sixteen Hindu men including Gourango Mandal, Nogendro Mandal, Amulyo Mandal, Subodh Mandal, Sudhir Mandal, Hirendronath Mandal and Johor Deuri of Atghor village in the Sorupkathi sub-district of Pirojpur and began beating them up in the courtyard of Gourango Mandal’s house. Gourango Mandal’s wife, Renu, went to stop them but the policemen pounced on her, took her to another room and raped her. When other women went to stop them the police insulted them as well. Sonaton Mandal’s daughter, Reena, was taken away by force and raped. She was abducted after this and since then there has been no news of her.