Heroes and Villains.
‘For Children are innocent and love justice; while most of us are wicked and naturally prefer mercy.’ – On Household Gods and Goblins, GK Chesterton
Law is not a popularity contest and what differentiates judges from common men in a decent society is that their jurisprudence and sense of justice is not swayed by public opinion. Unfortunately, the intellectuals, mostly those who use words as weapons to slay the innocent and protect the criminals are not bothered with justice or truth. They would pick the opportune moment, the opportune public emotion and write in order to magnify the softness of public opinion and use it to defend the cruelest and vilest acts.
The article in Mid-day, dated 4th of April, 2022, on Umar Khalid, by Ajaz Ashraf, And She waits for Umar Khalid is one such attempt. Umar is the man being investigated for and is under arrest for his alleged role in Delhi riots, in which 53 lives were lost. Undemocratic protest against an Act passed by an elected parliament of India, to protect the minorities facing persecution in theocratic states neighbouring India was fuelled by Anti-India forces on fake grounds of the Act being against the democratic and religious rights of Indian Muslims. The same eventually culminated into violence and anti-Hindu riots in February 2021.
The riots left 15 Hindus and 38 Muslims dead. It is pertinent to remember that Delhi has an overwhelmingly Hindu population of around 80 percent. The fact that most Hindus refused to participate in the violence ensured that the except for few Muslim-majority pockets, the city remained mostly peaceful.Those riots meticulously planned by the politicians and communists failed to turn into one sided violence against smaller minority on account of refusal of Hindus to get drawn into this mess.
These attempts of creating a martyr out of Umar Khalid is not new. Umar is Justin Bieber of the Leftist mob, and in his earlier brush with the law, where he allegedly shouted slogans calling for balkanisation of India, similar poetic and poignant pieces were written by worthies like a leftist Delhi University professor who wept elegantly on the centrepiece of a leading daily, crying ‘Umar Khalid, My Son’.
The state said that Umar was the organiser of protests in Government-funded University, JNU, in the memory of Afzal Guru. Afzal Guru was sentenced to death for planning and actively conspiring to attack the Parliament of India. While they initially denied that the event was to express solidarity with the terror attack mastermind, and claimed to be apolitical; the date of event coincided with the date of hanging of Afzal Guru. The other student who gained notoriety in the event, Kanhaiya Kumar fought election on Communist Party ticket and lost miserably. Now Kanhaiya is a member of Indian National Congress. Eight people from the security establishment had died in the attack, trying to defend the Parliament of India and elected representatives inside.
In the Midday article, the writer impresses with humanising the whole incident and judicial process that it looks little like an intellectual weighing on the side of justice and more like an emotional plea using the romantic side of an alleged riot conspirator to make a case for the terrorist. Umar Khalid is not a typical fanatic who comes from the lowest rung of the society, is not uneducated and unsophisticated. He is a cool operator, who has befitted from the largesse of a state which has been attempting to win over that class of Muslims, the rich and educated since Partition. He has had the privilege of going to the best of the educational institutes, with state covering most of his expenses, allowing him enough time to sharpen his fanatic fangs.
The article starting with a line of Pablo Neruda, setting the agenda for an article heavy on emotions and light on facts. The author tries to represent and emulate the feelings of Banojyotsana Lahiri, girlfriend of Umar Khalid by painting Umar Khalid as a Yaksha from Kalidasa’s Meghdootam. In between, Ayaz pushes his lies and agenda. For instance, he writes about the night of 13th September, 2020, Umar was arrested and Banorjyotsana could have written the saddest lines that Pablo Neruda mentioned in his poem. The journalist in his article states Umar was arrested even when Most people thought the charges were absurd. It is really impossible for anyone to understand where did Ayaz find those ‘most people’ and whether a referendum was needed to be done by the Courts before they upheld the UAPA charges on Umar looking at the gravity of crime and the evidences produced and sent him to the prisons. Writer’s plea seeking clemency for Umar Khalid rests on the separation of Umar from his beloved and that the writer believed that most people thought that the charges were absurd.
The communist pain is further sought to be deepened by the writer mentioning the chicken, mutton or fish dishes that aching lover tucks in while enduring the pangs of separation, sitting in a restaurant overlooking a garden as any Communist with a loving heart with frugal means would do. Any emotional man who has read the Autobiography of Bismil, an Arya-Samaji Revolutionary and his reference to one-Paisa worth of Sattu as the only meal during the day while he tried to escape the British after Kakori, can feel for Umar and choke with tears when one reads in the article- Umar was so sure that he would be arrested that he decided to order Chicken Pasta with white sauce as his last meal in freedom. That because the jail serves only vegetarian fare.
Those from Nineties who could escape the watchful eyes of the elders rarely enough to make a call to the beloved (not in prison on charges of riots), can understand the longing and sadness in the life of the lovers pulled apart by a draconian world in which the judiciary cannot overlook the death of IB Staffer Ankit Sharma whose body stabbed 51 times while he was alive during riots allegedly engineered by Umar and his friends. The poor lovers gets to have a video call only once in a week and a five-minutes phone call once a day. One can barely hold the emotions back reading at the hardships of prison life of Saintly and scholarly Umar.
Prison life can be torturous and taxing. Ordinary people can get lost in numbers. But as the Midday article urges us, Umar Khalid, with his love for Chicken Pasta with white sauce arching over his interest in breaking the Chicken Neck in North India with his colleague, cannot be taken as one of the more than 3,30,000 undertrial prisoners waiting for their turn to be heard by the Judges and eventually be released. Umar endures the harsh punishment as once Pandit Nehru did under the British when he learned Badminton in the prison. Umar has already read more than a hundred books, passed on by his doting friend, Ms. Lahiri. Midday tells us how Umar is working on his body and his mind as the writer wonders whether would someday write like Marquez- Love in the Times of Hindutva.
The reader is left wondering with a deep sense of loss whether while working out with the athlete Sushil Kumar in the prison gym, Umar will really write that memoir that the Midday journalist so longs to read and maybe join the hallowed circles of Arundhati Roy and Rana Ayyub. The writer ends the poetic piece of propaganda with a line of poetry, as Ms Lahiri refuses to write her saddest lines.
The writer is knowledgeable and well-read. He has poetic sensibilities but he lacks the sense of justice. I am reminded of Cicero who wrote that Knowledge which is divorced from justice may be called cunning rather than wisdom. I think of that house of Ankit Saxena standing alone, braving sympathies thrown towards the scared family living in isolated memories and secluded and silent sadness, as the frenzied notes of a fanatical orchestra of Umar Khalid reached its crescendo.
Ruins of bravery rot in the apathy of the people where the memories of Delhi Police Constable Ratan Singh lynched by a mob let lose by Umar and his associates come to haunt his school going daughters, when they blankly stare at the walls with sketches of their father who died in the line of duty. They are not sophisticated like Ms Lahiri and do not tuck in any fish or chicken or mutton. All that they have in their mouth is the bitter taste of a society which feels little and pretends much and it feels like sands from under the fiery summer sun of Rajasthan which Ratan Singh had left to uphold the Constitution in the Capital.
When I read about the culinary choices of Ms Lahiri as dejected soulmate of Umar Khalid as mentioned in Midday piece (though I do wonder whether Umar has a soul), and how her delicate fingers would tuck into meat or fish or duck, I am reminded of 22 year old young kid from Uttarakhand. Dilbar Negi was hacked to pieces and burned down, and I can almost hear his anguished cries of helplessness which makes it difficult for me to cherish the exquisite meal of Ms Lahiri in the restaurant overlooking the garden in which lovers are embracing. Cicero said that the life of the dead is set in the memory of the living. Where do those dead live whose memories too are erased and wiped off by scheming fanatics with no courage by men who have weaponised their words?
“All is forgotten in the stone halls of the dead. These are the rooms of ruin where the spiders spin and the great circuits fall quiet, one by one…..”- Stephen King, The Dark Tower.
