HVK Archives: Last train to Auschwitz
Last train to Auschwitz - Economic Times
Abheek Barman
()
May 31st 1996
Title : Last train to Auschwitz
Author : Abheek Barman
Publication : Economic Times
Date : 31st May, 1996
ONE winter evening, a friend and I take a bus from a Delhi
University Hostels to Jama Masjid. It's around eight in the,
evening, the time when you work up a tremendous lust for burra
kababs, and roads lead inexorably towards Karim's, tucked away in
that alley next to the Masjid. From the bus stop to Karim's is a
10 minute walk, through qawwali, great piles of chicken coops,
mountains of kababs being roasted by the road, bangle shops,
people, cycles, goats and cars jostling for space. And lights,
lights, lights.
It's not the military we notice first, but the emptiness. No
crowd, no vehicle, no kababs, no chicken coop, everything
shuttered and bolted, blank facades in low light. We look around
in the gloom and tight, helmeted faces give us the beady eye over
carbine and rifle sights. We walk towards the Masjid. A crowd is
gathered there, below those enormous steps, before the gate that
is locked tonight. Someone is speaking rapid Urdu over a
loudspeaker. To a congregation that radiates fear, or a quiet
tension. 'What's the matter?' I ask, 'Who's talking?'
"Nothing, nothing at all. It's just the chhote Imam speaking.'
No kababs are being sold, Karim's is shut, more and more men are
walking out of the spiderweb of lanes that radiate from the
Masjid, towards the gate, towards that urgent voice that talks in
Urdu, which I cannot understand. A torniquet of people, police
and the army draws tight over the corner, till anxiety swells to
bursting point.
Back at the hostel, people are distributing sweets - great, fat,
laddoos radiating happiness. The common room, the hub of social
activity, has people jumping up and down, some have climbed onto
the TT tables to make whoopie. 'What's up, what's the buzz,' I
keep asking. For I do not know yet, I have not been following
news for weeks. 'Arre yaar, are you from Mars, lately? Hum to
jeet gaye, aaj to hum Masjid tor diya. Jai Shree Ram! 'That was
December 6, 1992.
On December 8, students and teachers were supposed to take out
a
rally against the demolition of the Masjid at Ayodhya. Through
the night of December 7, people worked in tire hostels, writing
and pasting banners to sticks. Flags, supposed to be identical
to Ram's bhagowa jhanda, which Shivaji is said to have carried to
battle, were wrapped around lathis. The idea was to meet the
protesters midway, take the ban- ners and flags off the lathis.
And use the stick to politically correct uses - bust a few
kneecaps. Next morning, the anti-anti-demolition carnage fizzled
out. The marchers were too many. The attackers got cold feet.
No heads were busted. Aaya Ram.
Germany, November 9-10, 1938, Kristallnacht. All through the
long night, all over the country, things go bump. Bricks, stone,
mortar, cement, glass go flying. History crumbles as brownshirts
raze every Jewish synagogoue, school, library and Torah to the
ground. The Night of Broken Glass, the beginning of The Final
Solution.
New Delhi, May 28, 1996. Atal Behari Vajpayee, concluding a 13-
day minority government, pitches a moderate line. There is no
mention of Ayodhya, repealing Article 370 or forcing a Uniform
Civil Code. Nor a call to demolish mosques at Kashi and Mathura.
There are no exhortations to make a temple at Ayodhya. The BJP
uses the television a lot these days, to project this kinder-
gentler face. To pull the moderate voter, the south Indian
voter, the 'regional' voter. Everybody's welcome, to close the
gap between the 194 seats now, and the 270-plus needed for a
governing majority. In Parlia- ment, Vajpayee counts all the
Scheduled Caste faces in his Party, counts the Scheduled Tribe
number, forgets to count the Muslim members of the BJP. Then he
resigns. Gaya Ram.
Really? Today, especially since Valpayee's swansong, it's
fashionable to label the, BJP as a party of liberals. Liberals?
Okay, the liberals are out to lunch till the party comes to
power, but wait and see what happens when they get back. The
all-new, broadbased BJP will be nice to everyone. Their
priorities, as idealogue Govindacharya says on TV, will be to
work for the poor and to drive home Indian nationalism Read our
collective lips: No new mandirs.
Turn to page 15 of the BJP election manifesto. 'Hindutva is a
unifying principle which alone can preserve the unity and
integrity of our nation ... (it) is also the antidote to the
shameful efforts of any section to benefit at the expense of
others. On coming to power, the BJP government will facilitate
the construction of a magnificent Shri Rama Mandir at Janmasthan
in Ayodhya, which will be a tribute to Bharat Mata... The
concept of Rama lies at the core of their consciousness.
The new, improved BJP doesn't really mean that. It will fight
elections in India. In a democracy, you cannot take people,
especially minorities, for granted. The tyranny of majorities
cannot rise in a democracy.
Gerinany, 1929. The membership of the National Socialist German
Workers' Party has just risen to 1,80,000, from 25.000 four years
ago. One year back, the Party had got 8,00,000 votes in the
Reichstag. By July, 1932, this will go up to 14 million, making
it, with 38 per cent of votes, the largest voting bloc, giving it
230 members. In January 1933, Paul von Hindenburg, president of
a democratic German Republic, appoints Adolf Hitler, leader of
the Party, Chancellor of Germany. The Party consolidates while
in power. Its vote share is 44 per cent by March. On March 23,
it passes the Enabling Act, letting the Party issue decrees
independently of the Reichstag. On July 14, it becomes the only
political party in Germany by decree. Hindenburg dies in 1934,
Adolf Hitler becomes Fuhrer of Germany.
Back to May 28. Attempting to discounts the United Front.
Vajpayee declares his Party's affiliation with the RSS. Cut.
Nagpur, 1938 and M S Golwalkar is writing a book, two years
before succeeding K B Hedgewar as RSS sarsanghchatak. "To
keep
up the purity of the nation and its culture, Germany shocked the
world by. her purging the country of the semitic races - the
Jews. National pride at its highest has been maintained there.
Germany has also shown how well nigh impossible it is for races
and cultures, having differences going to the root, to be
assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for us in
Hindustan to learn and profit by," he writes.
By 1939, Jews In Germany have no citizenship, cannot attend
public schools, cannot have any business or profession, nor own
land or mix with non-Jews. They can- not visit parks, libraries
or museums and are forced into ghettos. Two years later, Jews
older than six years have to wear the Star of David on their
arms. Next year, they are taken to Auschwitz, Majdanek,
Treblinka, Chelmno, Sobibor, and Belzec and given gas baths. By
1945, an estimated 6 million people, 13 per cent of the
casualties of World War II, are dead Jews.
Golwalkar continues, "From this stand- point ... the non-Hindi
people in Hindustan must either adopt the Hindu culture and
language, must learn to revere Hindu religion, must entertain no
idea but the glorification of the Hindu nation ... in one word
they must cease to he foreigners or may stay in the country
wholly subordinated to the Hindu nation claiming nothing,
deserving no privileges, far less any preferential treatment, not
even citizen's rights."
Look through the Organiser before you go to vote next time. Look
especially, if you are Muslim or Christian, who prefer Urdu and
English over Sanskrit or Hindi. And, if you're Buddhist or Jain,
who, 'have never made any contribution to economic and
philosophical thought as such.' Yes, vote with care, for it may
be the last time you do it. And vote in fear, for the next train
to Auschwitz might start at New Delhi. And you might be on it.
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