Riot Read Free Page A

— lots of hard work, conversing with women through interpreters (though my Hindi’s getting much better now), some solicitous attention from kindly, hopeless Mr. Das and the helpful if devious extension worker Kadambari (the ones I told you about in my last letter), but with all my spare time spent alone, reading and writing and putting down my notes. And because that’s all I expected, that’s what I quickly got used to. Until I met Lakshman.
    Until I met Lakshman, and talked, and connected with his kindred spirit, and said goodnight, and I found myself flooded with the sense that I was missing something so bad I could taste it. Something I’d taught myself not to miss.
    No, I’m not in love or anything like that, Cindy, don’t worry. At least I don’t think so, and it’s all quite impossible, anyway. He’s married, and I’m here for ten months, and we inhabit different worlds. But when I came back to my room, with no phone, no TV, with only a few books and erratic light to read them by, I realized how much I’d cut myself off from something I really did have before. Companionship. I could find it with him, I think.
    And in the meantime, I’ll learn a lot! He’s had to educate me from scratch about the whole Hindu-Muslim question. Not just the basics — how the British promoted divisions between Hindus and Muslims as a policy of “divide and rule,” how the nationalist movement tried to involve everybody but the Muslim League broke away and called for a state of Pakistan, how the country was partitioned in 1947 to give the Muslims a separate state, etc etc — but on the more recent troubles. I suppose you know, Cin, that 12% of India’s eight hundred million people are Muslim, against 82% who’re Hindu (I think I’ve got the numbers right!). For decades since the Partition there’ve been small-scale problems in many parts of the country, riots pitting one group against the other, usually over some religious procession or festival intruding on the other religious group’s space. The Indian government has apparently become rather good at managing these riots, and people like Mr. Lakshman are trained at riot control the way a student is trained to footnote a dissertation. They try to create networks between the two communities, he tells me, using “peace committees” to build bridges between leaders of the two religious groups. It’s reassuring to listen to him talk about all this, because the atmosphere here isn’t all good. There’s a lot of tension in these parts over something called the Ram Janmabhoomi, a temple that some Hindus say was destroyed by the Mughal emperor Babar in 1526. Well, Babar (yes, just like the cartoon elephant!) replaced it with a mosque, apparently, and these Hindus want to reverse history and put the temple back where the mosque now stands. Though Lakshman tells me there’s no proof there ever was a temple there. Not that a mere detail like that matters to the Hindu leaders who’re busy organizing rallies and demonstrations all around the country and asking their followers to transport bricks to the site so they can build their temple there. …
    But enough about this place. Cindy, how’s your love life? Is Matt still acting as if what happened between you two never happened?…

 
    from Priscilla Hart’s scrapbook
    February 14, 1989
    â€¦
    â€œNo, I’m not particularly young for this job. By the time Jesus Christ was my age, he’d been crucified.”
    I laughed a little uncertainly, not knowing how to take this. “Do you see your role here as some sort of Messiah to the people?”
    â€œNo,” he said directly. “Do you?”
    I was a bit taken aback at this. “Me? No! Why?”
    â€œWell, you’ve come to this benighted place, leaving behind all your creature comforts, your microwave ovens and video stores and thirty-one