Where’s the faith?

Published in the Hindustan Times Edit Page on March 2, 2005

Is Delhi more cosmopolitan and less communal than, say, Ahmedabad? My friend Irshad says no. Now Irshad’s been in Delhi much longer than I have. Almost sever years now, he says. And in these seven years ----- by Irshad’s own admission ---- the city’s been good to him. An economic migrant from Kolkata like me, Irshad has moved up Delhi’s corporate ladder rather swiftly. And it shows. A new car, a rather specious, rented apartment in posh south Delhi, the latest gizmos. And a stunner for a girlfriend (though Irshad insists that has got nothing to do with his doing well professionally). Life was a breeze till a fateful Saturday night last month.
It had been a particularly tiring day for Irshad. With a splitting headache, he decided against a late night and hit the bed early. At around 1 a.m., he was woken up by a loudspeaker honking away to full glory. Looking out, he saw a congregation at a makeshift pandal. There was, he realised, a jagran. His girlfriend, who had also woken up by the commotion outside, insisted that he go out and tell someone to tell off the loudspeaker. “The noise is way beyond permissible limit,” she said. Irshad hesitated. “See, if you don’t protest, they will go on like this forever,” she rebuked. So Irshad went out and approached the nearest guy in the crowd. “Could you please lower the volume?” he was curtly told that it would not be possible. “Call the cops,” she said, when he came back. “But?” “But nothing! This is blatant flouting of the laws. We have a right to protest.”
So Irshad protested. He dialed 100 and lodged a complaint. The policemen came and shut the loudspeaker off. But what followed was something Irshad had not bargained for. What was a religious gathering at a neighbourhood jagran morphed into a stone-pelting mob outside Irshad’s home. Stones abd brickbats apart, choicest expletives were hurled at him for disrupting a ‘holy’ ceremony. It had been a mistake to allow someone of his religion to rent an apartment in the locality, they said.
Not very nice things were told about his live-in too. Bad blood, somebody commented, was spreading bad culture. This continued for well over an hour. Call the cops again, she pleaded. This time, Irshad said no.
A while back, Irshad was offered a transfer by his company to Ahmedabad in a senior position. He had declined the offer then. “That city just gives me an uneasy feeling, you know. It’s not easy to forget what happened there in 2002. Delhi’s much safer that way,” he had told me. Last week, he asked his company for the Ahmedabad transfer.