Anatomy of a Censoring Mob Threatened by Book Reading in Public

A peaceful community book reading by a group of citizens in a park in Ahmedabad was physically disrupted and attacked by a mob of hindutva goons. A member* of the reading circle gives us a chilling blow-by-blow account of the attack and the frustrating delay and denial of justice by law enforcers thereafter.

What led to the violent disruption of the reading circle on August 27 at the AUDA Garden in Vastrapur this year? Was it just the two books – ‘I Am Malala’ and ‘Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl’ that provoked the violent mob led by the Bajrang Dal? Or was this part of a much larger pattern of violence in the Hindu version of Taliban where everything – from books, clothes, food, to films, comedy and protests – offends them?

More troubling is the role of a section of parents who brought in Bajrang Dal elements to “solve” their issues with the school management. Why would they willingly invite extremist hindutva elements into a school their wards studied in? While they sought to force changes in curriculum and administration, did these parents think that bringing in goons was the best way to do so?   

How it all started

The genesis of the reading circle was the decision of the Anand Niketan School, a private upmarket school in Ahmedabad to remove the books – the memoirs of Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani education activist and Nobel Peace Prize winner and the diary of the German Jew and holocaust victim Anne Frank from its reading list after protests from a section of parents and right-wing groups.

But even before the books became the target of these parents and their rightwing supporters, a food safety issue at the school had pitted parents against the school administration. On August 12, a piece of glass was found in the canteen food, and the school authorities, rushed to get the student X-rayed to assure his parents that it was not swallowed.

The angry parents did not trust the report and soon the issue escalated. Other, unconfirmed reports said that a student had found worms in vegetables and   parents protested about eggs being cooked in the school canteen.

Target of Attack Shifted From Food to Books

The parents then chose to target a Muslim curriculum consultant who had been associated with the school for several years. They objected to the books ‘I Am Malala’ and ‘The Diary of a Young Girl’ being on the optional reading list. According to reports, some parents called Bajrang Dal members to fight the school administration on their behalf and on Aug 14, a mob led by Bajrang Dal leader Hiren Rabari climbed the gate and the boundary wall of the school to demand the removal of the books from the curriculum.

The issue snowballed from then on and the school administration decided to remove the books as well as terminate the contract of the consultant.

A young businessman in the city found the controversy over the books troubling and wanted to organise a silent reading in protest. He reached out to core members of the Students and Youth Collective (SYCA), Ahmedabad, and the collective co-organised the reading.

Violent Disruption of a Peaceful Reading

 The reading went on peacefully from 4 p.m. to about 6:15 p.m. at a park near the DEO office in Vastrapur. Around 6:30, as the group was dispersing, about 40 men entered the park shouting “Jai Shree Ram” and carrying thick wooden sticks, metal rods and baseball bats. Some wore saffron scarves. They had left more sticks outside the park, near the entrance.

Their body language was aggressive from the start, and the first thing they objected to was I Am Malala, though we also had books on Sardar Patel, Gandhi, Nehru and Ambedkar. They shouted, “Kya bola tha Malala ne Kashmir ke baare mein?” and “Usko padhne wale desh drohi hain.”

I was standing a little behind the group, filming. Two of them were staring at me, and I asked, “Kya hai, ghoor kyun rahe ho?” They said, “Tujhe dikkat hai to bahar chali ja, humein jo karna hai hum karenge.” Another said, “Zyada bolegi to pakad lo isko.” A second woman who was recording was told, “Kal tak gayab kar denge tujhe.” The man who appeared to be leading the mob gave his name: Hiren Rabari.

I could see this would turn violent quickly. A call was made to the police helpline. Some people tried to sit the men down and talk calmly, but they had no interest in a dialogue. To buy time, some of the readers began singing the national anthem; the attackers objected to that too, claiming one person’s shoulders had moved and that this was disrespect!

Then they began pushing and beating people. They shouted, “Inke pant utar ke check karo ye Musalman hai ki nahin.” Two or three ran towards the gate and tried to shut it so no one could come in to help. I ran over and stood there so they could not, shouting, “Aapki private property nahi hai ye, jo darwaza band kar sakte ho.”

By then, they were chasing people down the street in separate groups. It was about 7 p.m., peak office hours, and the street was full of people walking and riding two-wheelers. Residents of Casa Vyoma, the society directly opposite the park, were also watching.

Despite telling the police that the mob had assembled in large numbers, only two policemen arrived in a van — one in uniform, the driver in casuals. When the officer in uniform tried to stop the assault, the attackers beat him too, in front of everyone. No one watching said or did anything.

A man came up asking questions, giving the impression that he might be able to help. In my panic, I told him we had been reading books silently and that Bajrang Dal goons had come and started hitting us. He immediately began shouting, “Aeee, gunda kisko bola?” I said, “Jo dande leke aayega aur pitai karega wo gunda hi hai,” and he turned aggressive himself, advancing on me and repeating the question multiple times.

Another woman was hit with a stick. I saw that a friend was being beaten and ran towards him. By then, the police officer was panicking and instructing us to get into the van. We tried, but the attackers kept pulling my friends back out and slapping them. Both policemen looked badly shaken. “Kaise bhi jaldi baitho van mein, hum tumhe police station le ja rahe hain. Yahan ruke to ye log tumhe maar dalenge,” they said.

We reached Vastrapur police station. Others arrived with the books, and with sticks left behind in the park to show both the range of what we had been reading and the weapons used. We gathered in one room and began explaining the sequence of events. The PI, G M Chaudhary, spoke to us but did not pay attention to the details.

She watched some of the videos we had taken and asked the writer to record our statement, who wrote a single summary paragraph that left out everything specific. Seeing this, we said we would give a written complaint instead of an oral one. Some lawyers and senior activists had reached the station by then. We went over the draft several times, since each detail could determine a corresponding criminal charge.

We gave Hiren Rabari’s name. We had also identified some other attackers by matching our videos to their Instagram accounts — after Bajrang Dal Gujarat’s official account posted a video of the attack, boasting that they had taught us a lesson in their own language. The algorithm began pushing similar accounts to us, and we identified another attacker as Jimit Rabari.

The police brought three young attackers to the station, and they sat in the same space as us, quite casually. Soon, more of them began arriving, as though they were sitting in a park. It was very intimidating and triggering. We recognised at least 20 to 25 of their faces from the park. Two or three senior Bajrang Dal men came to the station and spoke to the PI for a long time behind a closed door.

Unlike the businessman, who had protested for the first time in his life, perhaps the rest of us did not look gullible. The PI shrewdly took him aside, recorded his statement — which again left out crucial details from our written complaint — and persuaded him to sign it. The rest of us, the primary complainants, witnesses and informants, were left out of the FIR process without our consent.

The PI kept saying she would match the details later, that she needed to eat, that she wanted to go home. We left the station at 2:15 a.m. The FIR, without the details we had been promised, was uploaded at 3 a.m., and, based on the messages we received in response, all three of those arrested were released at the same time.

No arrests, no further police action against the mob

There have been no arrests since. We filed an additional complaint setting out the differences between our written complaint and the FIR, had it inwarded from the DCP office and met the DCP Harshadkumar Patel, who said action would be taken within a week. Nothing followed. We were attacked on 27th August. On 31st, we held a press conference demanding the arrest of the two primary accused, Hiren Rabari and Jimit Rabari, within 72 hours; a ban on Bajrang Dal in Gujarat and across India; and a response and apology from Home Minister Harsh Sanghvi for failing to protect us and to deliver justice.

Twenty days on, we are still waiting. We hold responsible not only Bajrang Dal, the state government and the police — for a grave violation of our safety, for rioting, and inciting religious violence — but also the section of Anand Niketan parents and the people on the street, who have let Gujarat become a factory of hate and crime over the decades. These elements have given complete impunity to state-sponsored terrorism and culture wars.

These are the people who countenance violence against Muslims and Dalits every Navratri, or behave with cowardice and hypocrisy even when their own friends are attacked by saffron-clad men. These are the Brahmin and Jain men who eat meat in private while the administrators of their children’s school claim “all the students are strictly vegetarian.” They laugh at cheap jokes on caste, gender and class. They laugh at pronouns and the Palestinian flag and blame reservation for everything.

However, there is a pushback. The reading circle itself had emerged as a coming together of two groups -one led by students and the other, by working professionals – who were undoubtedly part of privileged castes and classes and would have been otherwise invested in the status quo of a post-2002 pogrom model of a “rising” Gujarat.

What follows now is a contest between the collusion of these elite hate mongers and the persistence of not-so-privileged young people who refuse to be cowed by political and social violence. We won’t be silenced!

*(The writer, who prefers to remain anonymous, was a participant in the reading circle and a witness to the violent mob’s disruption of it.)