A WHITE LINE AND A MOSQUE (December 2000)
My article in The Hindustan Times, 6
December 2000. (For those who may not know it, this date is the
anniversary of the destruction of the Babri Masjid)
In the year of grace
1989, I visited the Wagah border [India Pakistan Border] with a friend. It was
evening, time for the lowering of flags, for the BSF and Pakistan Rangers to
perform their beautifully choreographed ceremony with goose-steps and challenging
gestures. I saw coolies, uniformed men and tourists look at each other
with friendly curiosity, children being held up on parental shoulders to catch
a better glimpse of the ‘Other’ country, yards near and years apart. Some were
chatting with the men in uniform to get permission for a brief foray across the
forbidden line. So much symbolic meaning, such deep historic memories
concentrated in such an ordinary space: the good old Grand Trunk Road, Punjab’s
lush green fields, eucalyptus trees, two iron gates.
And that thick white
line.
Have you ever come across the term sub-liminal ? It means an image which lies just outside one’s awareness. The dictionary defines liminal as being situated in a position on or on both sides of a boundary or threshold. It also means pertaining to or constituting a transitional or initial stage of a process; and marginal, insignificant, incidental. I thought more about the word and I realised there were problems, logical ones, which held back my comprehension. What were the defining limits of an initial stage? The space of a process? Did words like stage, process, position, imply that liminal existence possesses an entity of its own?
No, the word sounded
like a bit of jargon, of no use to ordinary people. But when I saw the coolies
treading on a white line 12 inches wide, I began to understand the
ordinariness of liminality. Whom did the line belong to? Was there another
razor sharp line, or a tiny space between the first six inches and the next six
inches? Did not the six inches on either side draw into their respective
magnetic fields the space up to each gate? Was that space just a few yards
broad or did it extend backwards for hundreds of miles, incorporating millions
of persons?
And what of the little
crowd which gazed wistfully across the metal barriers? Why did the
frontier-tourists secretly wish to imitate the coolies, walk right up to the
12-inch white line and put their foot across it? What did it mean to go back
home and say they had crossed over? How would it be to stand with one foot on
either side of the white line? Better still, with both feet squarely on the
line’s 12 inches?
Liminality. That was
the word for the ambience surrounding the painted line across the GT Road.
The footfalls of the coolies, the colours of their shirts, the synchronised
steps, the gestures of the soldiers were all markers of their liminal status.
The intense desire in many assembled hearts to step across the line, if only
for an instant, brought them too, within the sphere of liminality. I began to
glimpse the meaning of the term ‘moment of truth’.
Years later, in the
summer of 2000, I visited Northern Ireland. The gently rolling
countryside, the blue-green tint in the vegetation, the laughter in the faces
of ordinary people. What a beautiful country. I forgot to visit the border to
see another artificial line, also drawn by Englishmen. But suddenly, in Belfast,
I did not need to. For there, in the middle of neighbourhoods, separating one
street from another, or the same street from itself, were tall sheets of steel,
through which not even a ray of light could pass.
There were gates
blocking roads, kerbs painted with the conflicting colours of Nationalism and
Loyalism. There were huge wall murals reminding the Irish of their bloody past,
asking them to continue their struggle to unite the Republic despite the
objections of the Loyalists or to keep it divided despite the aspirations of
the Nationalists. I saw a loyalist mural in which a black-hooded warrior
pointed a rifle straight in the face of its viewers. The border was in the
street, everywhere. Unity in Separation.
Decommissioning
weapons? said my guide, an Englishman living in Belfast who has
devoted himself to communal harmony, like some mad people in my country. The
IRA can easily get fresh weapons. We have got to decommission the mind, he
said, tapping his forehead.
Weeks later, I found
myself outside the stone huts of Bhil rural labourers on the outskirts of Jodhpur.
They had taken refuge from religious persecution in Pakistan. Here,
officially designated as Pak-Oustees, they live on an allotted space, under
Government scrutiny, subject to the rapacity of stone-quarry contractors and
the lesser constabulary. What shall we do babu? one of them asked me. Over
there we were called Hindustanis - here we are known as Pakistanis. But we are
just workers. May we not live in peace? I thought sadly to myself, No, you have
to carry a border around with yourselves – it’s a part of our glorious
historical heritage.
I approach another
threshold, the threshold of comprehension. I think about how nations may
suspend themselves in liminality, in frozen contemplation of a painted line
bequeathed to them by their forefathers. How communities like to see themselves
as mirror images of each other. How ordinary people often avoid
self-definition while the commanders of identity insist on clear
demarcation. How a 16th-century mosque became a 20th-century disputed
structure for a few years, returned to the status of a mosque for a few hours
while it was in transition to a heap of rubble, and then, as rubble, was
transformed yet again into an imaginary mosque where alone an as-yet imaginary
temple might be forthcoming. How such a temple would only have value if it
occupied the precise space where stood the ghost of the mosque.
Why a spectacle
celebrating the sacred weaponry of the Gurus may be fully enjoyed only when the
all-too-real weapons of terror have been silenced. Why those who defy the law
get to the position where they lay down the law. Why what is known is often
unspoken, and what is spoken is often unknown. Why half-truths are lies on the
verge of becoming truths.
I begin to apprehend a
liminal space whose boundary is shared by wisdom and ignorance, love and hate,
violence and non-violence, means and ends. Liminal because each conjures up the
other. Because ignorant people can have flashes of wisdom, because hatred is a
fixation. Because ahimsa is not the name of passivity and surrender, but of
resilience.
As long as the circumstances
which incubate division persist, non-violence will linger on a sub-liminal
threshold. The time spent on that invisible line will be fraught. But tension
will be our fate until we cross the barrier, and it vanishes behind us, so that
we never again want to go back.
My mind transports me back to Northern Ireland, the city of Derry. Not Londonderry anymore. My brief sojourn was marked by an experience of great friendship and warmth from the Irish. I said so to my gracious hostess Mari Fitzduff, a woman who has worked indefatigably for peace over the decades. You are such wonderful, generous and musical people.. My appreciation was loaded with an unspoken question.
Her intuitive response
told me much about India. We love strangers, Dilip, she said, except our
own. Our strangers. Our mound of rubble. Weep a tear for our disputed
structure. That’s liminality for you. For us all.
Dilip Simeon
