Rajdeep Sardesai and the Mobile Vulgus

The all-night qawwali at the annual Urs of a Sufi saint in Allahabad would witness a supernatural phenomenon. As the hard-clapping and tabla-beating would grow louder, the qawwals would crescendo the takrar – somebody or the other in the audience would begin to go into a haal, a state of agony and ecstasy rolled into one. The man in haal shakes uncontrollably, dances or rather stomps the ground, shakes his head before revolving it clockwise or anti-clockwise, sweat glistening in harsh light, soaking his soiled clothes. Then people invoke the saint to liberate him from the djinns, the well-meaning souls that grace the event on that holy day. All this would end with the man banging his head against the steps of the mausoleum amid chants, incantations and furious obeisance to the powers that be, that we don't see.

Invariably, this would be followed by more people experiencing haal. The Urs, the day of the Sufi saint's ascension to paradise, used to be a secular affair, in the sense, a good number of Hindus would actively participate in this festival in honour of a Muslim mendicant. But none of them would experience the haal, the state of direct connection to the peer (saint).

This was a Muslim exclusive experience until one Urs, the honourable Shuklaji, a devout Brahmin, went into a haal. He took it to another level. He was shaking more violently, crying out louder than the previous year’s loudest haal. He was banging his head so hard that people were afraid he may crack his skull. The routine chants followed and he came back into worldly consciousness from a state of spiritual superconsciousness. My friend Vikas was forever curious about haal, the djinns, the state of unbearable yet ecstatic lightness everyone claimed it to be. It couldn't be explained rationally. He couldn't just go and ask the Muslim elders lest it should be construed as casting doubts on the holiness of a saint. He didn't, however, harbour any such inhibition asking the question to Shuklaji, his uncle.

So how did he, a Hindu, a Brahmin, experience haal, a phenomenon of the Sufi order of Islam? he asked. Shuklaji's answer was blunt: "Muslims don't own it. If they can do it, why can't I?"

He had, it turns out, faked it.

A month later, he swept the local body elections with the "other" community voting for him in large numbers. All's well that ends well.

If you know Nirmal Baba's blessings business model, you are aware of how he works. In a ticketed, sold-out event, one by one, people in the audience will get up and praise the baba's godly attributes and cry in joy telling the story of his miracles and then narrate the biggest crisis  in their life. Baba will ask them to have random food — from grimy samosas to roadside mint lassi - and the hall will cry in unison. The joy of loving the same baba, the joy of being one of the many followers who pay to see him. To feel his presence together, to laugh together and to cry together…The routine is repeated in evangelist congregations as people writhe while being saved. They have visions, see the Good Lord, as if on demand.

I never expected my silent, reticent self to shout slogans until once I was climbing a mountain.

Pilgrims coming down would invoke "Jor se bolo" and I joined the rest of the crowd in replying with "Jai mata di". There is something about being part of a crowd. It's like losing your own self and become one with others. The holy communion. The most individualistic among us have shouted slogans on cue. This is how political rallies work. This is how temples ring with chants. If one among the crowd goes into a trance, others join the dance. If everybody just sits down with eyes closed, the one tapping his foot suppresses his desire and closes his eyes.

My friend Bakr Ali couldn't bear a paper cut. But on Muharram, he would be seen lashing himself with blades that soaked him in blood. In mourning, the Shia in him would take over as he inflicted pain on his body to experience the pain that Prophet Mohammed's grandsons suffered in Karbala. Would he be able to endure it if he was alone? I doubted it even then.

But when this communion is not so holy, perfectly normal, calm minds would indulge in the unspeakable. I haven't known a more peace-loving community than the Gujaratis. During my years in Ahmedabad, I learnt that the enterprising and industrious Gujarati wants his business to run no matter what. Peace may be overrated, but the business-minded love its dividend. So when the old city would be under curfew during minor communal clashes, which were way too often, they would be unhappy and call communalism a curse on society. They did not want a knifing incident to halt their business. The west of the Sabarmati would go about its business as usual, while the old city was under curfew.

Then 2002 happened. I couldn't believe Amdavadis were burning shops, businesses and burning alive people, neighbours…The mindless violence didn't quite fit the average Gujarati I knew. I wouldn’t call them meek exactly, but they aren’t comfortable with violence. They wouldn’t riot for anything, I thought. The truth, as we all know, was that the average Gujarati did participate in the riots and arson.

The holy communion holds the key to the why of it.

A mob has many heads but no brain - Thomas Fuller

We surrender our individual intellect to the crowd when we become a mob. The sense of right and wrong goes out the window and blood and gore enters the building. Politicians, political organisations use this in their campaigns. We see them singing, "Har Har Modi" and "Rahul Gandhi Zindabad", children and adults alike. There is a sense of shared experience, a togetherness in cause, and a feeling of effect.  

That individual reason dissolves in the collective irrational has been used by bigots, often by those of the religious bent, for ages. An individual goes on murdering people because one no longer remains singular in a murderous mob. It begins with one individual’s individual act and ends in a remorseless carnage by a mindless, faceless mob.

Hence, the difficulty in evoking regret for riots. The individuals do not feel responsible for an act that they thought everyone else was committing. It's those who plot and herd them and benefit from it who really know the whole story. The stories that individuals know are bits of truth, not the whole truth. An individual knows he took part in an irrational act, but is unable to explain the absence of reason. Hence, he attempts to justify it by that collective's story of injustice of the past.  

Ye jo desh hai mera

We are proud of our non-resident Indians. Especially, those in the West. When extreme Islamism poses a real threat to peace and harmony, communities get branded in this “clash of civilisations”. Indians, however, have remained above it. Beyond the caste and religious divides we experience at home, Indians abroad are considered a community of achievers bound by one cultural identity.

In the US, they are affluent, influential and respected because unlike the Middle East where the majority of Indians provide menial labour, in the US, Indians are the part of the middle class, the services class. Doctors, engineers, business-owners et al. They aren't identified with criminal hooliganism.

Yet, this weekend some of them were part of the ugly Indian show. Senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai was interviewing a group of people near Madison Square Garden where Prime Minister Modi was scheduled to speak. The mood was festive as people chanted "Modi, Modi". In the melee of "Narendra Modi Zindabad" slogans, one person in the crowd said "Rajdeep Sardesai Murdabad", others joined in. This deteriorated into a free-for-all heckling, jostling that ended in a scuffle.

This wasn't a mob of the illiterate masses. They were Green Card-flaunting pride-of-India class who have made it big in the land of liberty and opportunity. They have obviously forgotten what liberty means.

Sardesai has reported live from worse situations, so he ignored it and carried on with his job. In the age of social media, polarisation progresses at 10 mbps speed. We saw people blaming Rajdeep by offering a ten-second clip of the scuffle. Those defending him tweeted the same clip. Because it's what you believe that drives your opinion. A clip or any evidence is immaterial. Or material, if one can interpret it according to one's belief.  

Hence a photograph of an earthquake in Tibet is captioned with massacre of Buddhists in Burma and triggers riots in Assam, which leads to mayhem in Mumbai. A photograph from an earthquake in Afghanistan goes around as killing of Muslims in Burma and protests erupt in Lahore. Riots break out based on morphed Facebook posts. Social media are also our own little communities where we project our self and lose it to the collective at the same time.

Peek into the jehadi Twitter. They have made each other believe that dying is better than living in this world created by God. That this is not where we belong and it's martyrdom that will deliver us from this duniya and allow us entry into al-firdaus, the paradise. Reason takes a backseat, emotion drives fast. A crowd may not have a brain, but it has emotions. And motion. The word "mob" comes from the Latin Mobile Vulgus. It means the 'fickle crowd'. Mobile. Vulgar.