[Reader-list] A heresay note on social fact finding

[ambarien qadar]

Dear all,

I guess I am saying nothing terribly profound when I say that what we 'see' as truth depends on our own socio-historical positions...where we come from, where we stand and where we are going. As the events unfold, and voices emerge, I am repeatedly reminded of a Roshoman-esque landscape. 

Yes. The response of the 'community' is not monolithic. Rightly so.
How can it be when an erstwhile land-owning, eagerly upwardly mobile, family that could afford expensive foreign education for their children shares streets with that of a kabadi-wallah, rafoo-wallah, the lowest rung of Jamia sweepers, whose children indulge in rabble-rousing the entire day? 
I am reminded of the times when we were trying to put together an activist group in the area.  Everytime we would meet in one of the tastefully done drawing rooms, we would confront the fact that one of us would not want that kabadi-wallah to enter and be one of us. 
The refrain would be " ye bahar ke logon ne yahan aakar, yahan ka mahoul kharab kar diya hai...hum apne doston ko bhi nahin bula sakte...". 
(These people who have come from the outside have spoilt the neighbourhood. We cannot even invite our friends home.)

Today, when I visit the site of the encounter or generally hang around to feel the pulse in the neighbourhood, I cannot overlook the sharp class divide that informs the division of opinion over what has happened. 
(And I am not using the concept of class in its marx-ian sense. It could very well be an aspirational identity.) 
Thus, a Sahara reporter I met later in the evening that day, was all too eager to prove that what has happened, was justified. But Dilli-wali amma demands a high-level judicial enquiry into the event. The question she is asking is that if the police approached the neighbours on grounds of suspicion, they would have helped the boys surrender. In which case, even the police would have been at an advantage of more information about the 'terror network'. Why did the police kill so brutally and spectacularly?

Ambarien