Twin towers and beyond: The ugly side of demolition

One needn’t go back to the days of the Colosseum, when convicts or prisoners taken during war were thrown to the beasts, to the rapturous shouts of the watchers. This was in Rome during the early centuries of the Christian era. Public executions took place in London till at least 1868, which is almost in our times — the trains had started moving, the telephone and street lighting by means of electricity were just a few years away, and every literate person in Europe and America read newspapers. Men gathered and relished watching people being hanged at Newgate. All were wrong-doers in the perception of the state and theirs too if G Kitson Clark, the author of The Making of Victorian England, is to be believed. Hence it is no surprise that the past still lives, and we belong to it. The sight of benighted souls in Noida watching, gleefully at that, the two towers in which people might have lived in future years being brought down, is sufficient proof of it.

The issues surrounding such behaviour can be looked at from several angles. There was no illegality about the demolition. The Supreme Court had ordered it, and it was executed by competent organisations. Many may not have known what lay behind the demolition, and for them it was just a thrilling experience on a level with a closely contested cricket match of the Indian Premier League.

Then what’s wrong with the past?

Let’s look at the time when the Roman empire was in decline and invasions were common. Inroads meant death and destruction, and the despoiling of cities. The matching retribution in the minds of the citizenry could be the devouring of the marauders by hungry lions brought from Africa. And in England, when Thomas Cranmer and Nicholas Ridley were burnt to death in the 1550s, upon the orders of Queen Mary, the acts were perfectly legal. Given the importance of religion in the 16th century, the hold it had on people’s sense of morality, and their common code of conduct, anyone falling foul of the authorities had to be meted out this form of punishment. When opinion was turning against the monarchy in the 17th century and an important state functionary — probably Thomas Wentworth —was decapitated in public, people revelled in joy, shouting: “His head is off.” Denying punishment meant violating their god’s will.

Granted, no one was killed in the Noida episode. But indeed some culprits got their just deserts, didn’t they? What added to the excitement of the public was that the offenders were “rich people” (the owner of the affected real estate firm said he lost Rs 500 crore because of the buildings being destroyed). Did it occur to anyone what lay behind the infraction? Did anyone ask himself what compulsions the promoters of the real estate firm faced? Was there any discussion as to why some promoters stay behind bars and some do not? Would this not be a precedent for buildings coming up in future? If the promoters were guilty, what about the government authorities, who might have included members of the Indian Administrative Service, by all reckoning still the most prestigious job one can get in India? Asking these is not to hold an apologia for anyone but to simply broaden the perspective in which discourse can take place.

The discourse should be broadened, particularly given the zeitgeist of the times we are living in. Another kind of demolition took place six years ago, when demonetisation was announced. Held out as action against unaccounted income, that too became, in the perception of people with low earnings, an assault on the rich. Here some utterances of a hugely important political functionary simply ignited people’s primal and even base instincts: “The poor are sleeping well and the rich (because of their wealth melting away) were taking sleeping-pills.” Did the number of cars on roads reduce as a result of people losing their ill-gotten money? No one paused for an answer.

People have the notion that justice should be retributive. It shouldn’t. But this idea of justice has shaded into the workings of the state. Hence you have legal constructions being brought down in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh on one pretext or another (legal, or else why should the authorities rebuild them?). And this blended into the state policy of destroying the properties of those who indulged in vandalism, never mind if they could not be identified. And finally there was the great demolition — that of the Babri Masjid —“justice” done to a whole community, the purpose of which was upheld by the highest court of the land, with some concessions thrown in.

At the centre of a justice system is the individual, not a community. Any deviation from this thinking can lead to riots or even war. It also needs to be remembered that civilisation works best when something grows or is nurtured, not when billows of smoke or dust emanate from the ruins of a building, whether due to aerial bombardment or controlled explosions.