I hope you are watching the news, my classmate from Shimla texted me on the afternoon of 11 September. I wasn’t. Nobody watches the news anymore. Unless, of course, it arrives at your doorstep with a thud.
On Wednesday, protesters rallied by local Hindutva organisations clashed with the police in Shimla. The sheer dramatic value of these events has propelled the Himachal Pradesh capital into national consciousness. The last time something like this happened in the city, it was the 2018 drought. Except now, it’s far more sinister and possibly at the point of no return. “Will this be our Ayodhya?” my friend asked. Honestly, I was too dumbfounded to offer an instant denial.
Based on who you ask, a scuffle between inebriated adolescents has been turned into a communal contest. The mosque in question, in the Sanjauli area – where my friend lives by the way – has been around for ages. Originally a one-floor structure, it added two more floors over time, and was dutifully dragged to the local municipal court for it. The matter has been sub judice for more than 14 years. This makes the latest exhibition of mutiny and civil unrest unexpected and, from all viewpoints available, opportunistic.
This isn’t about the mosque, but about importing an edgy form of politics to the relatively untapped reservoirs of Hindu anxiety. Shimla, though it has never seen communal clashes at the scale of major cities, now stands on the cusp of something epochal.
The lens of homogeneity
Shimla and Himachal Pradesh are overwhelmingly Hindu. The 2011 Census places Shimla’s Muslim population at a pitiable 2.3 per cent. That’s the district, by the way. The town’s figures – even if you factor in the growth since – should actually be lower. To put that number into perspective, few people in Shimla can actually claim to have seen a Muslim. Fewer still would have worked alongside one.
The majority of this Muslim population are craftspeople – carpenters, tailors – who have arrived from neighbouring states to make a living. A significant proportion make up Shimla’s porters – quite literally the spine on which much of the town’s heavy load is carried. They can be seen at the railway station, in the sabzi mandi (vegetable market), or within residential areas lugging LPG cylinders on their backs. Unlike urban sprawls, the hill town still depends on hard labour to function. A benevolent hierarchy, so to speak, has always been in place.
Naturally, sectarian violence and even peaceful communal agitations have always felt like distant eventualities. So much so that most of us ‘Shimlaites’ have been perennially convinced of the town’s unheralded kinship.
It’s strange how, until someone throws a brick at a window, it only ever feels like a tool for building. The dichotomy of purpose is ingrained into its existence. Much like a town, unknowingly ahead of the political curve, already a kind of ‘rashtra’. No wonder a dumb sense of peace has prevailed for years. ‘Schrodinger’s Secularism’, let’s call it.
Also read: Reality behind Shimla mosque protest Indians ignore—Hindu fears over ‘changing demography’
The dogma of ‘peaceful hills’
Hill stations are, by definition and through imagination, quaint destinations. They are located in human fantasy at the meeting point of both reprieve and fantasy. Most of India travels to the hills because it’s the furthest you can travel away from the country, within the country. To that part, at least, Shimla’s sleepy curriculum, its Victorian monuments and its all-together pleasant climate collaborate to maintain this conceit of peace.
The idea is that a town so beautiful, so evocative, and so moody couldn’t possibly become a sight of crime, violence and bigoted ideas. It’s precisely the fantasy the likes of Imtiaz Ali (Tamasha) have promoted through their cinema. It’s an idea that most of us who grew up in the town have deluded ourselves with. Most of us, who are these days texting each other frantically with questions like “Can you believe this is happening in Shimla?”
The image that these protests will invariably pretend to ‘fight for’, an image now ‘threatened by outsiders’, contradicts ground realities. The mosque in question is by some distance the least of Shimla’s offenders. Himachal Pradesh, as of 2023, has some 25,000 illegal structures, most of which are reportedly located in Shimla (Urban), Shimla (Rural) and Kasumpti. Most of these are habitual local offenders to the town’s 2.5-floor rule – three floors above the foundation are considered illegal.
Despite the National Green Tribunal (NGT) repeatedly urging for stricter application of the said law, residents have flouted it with the same recklessness and disdain that they’ve now brought to the site of a mosque quietly tucked away in a corner of the town. You don’t need an academic survey to detect this infrastructural decay. You can witness it by driving around town or on a walk – should you get the space for either.
Also read: The Delhi prof who said tombs & mosques were not just ‘Muslim’, but ‘Indian Muslim’
The political ambiguity
The incumbent Congress government led by first-time Chief Minister Sukhvinder Singh Sukhu is unlikely to clamp down with an iron fist. Only in June, communal tensions kicked up in Nahan (Sirmaur) in South-West Himachal after a Muslim-owned shop was vandalised by Hindutva activists on the pretext of suspected cow slaughter. The local police – this is on camera – largely stood by and watched without interfering. That in itself offers a political outlook, a peek into the gradual awakening of an unkindled Hindutva outpost.
Further, things have become complicated after Congress supporters and select MLAs chose to side with the violent protesters. The party’s own Shimla-based MLA, Anirudh Singh, has addressed the state assembly on the problem of ‘illegal jamaatis’ and the spectre of ‘love jihad’. Rather than meet the sword with thunder, Sukhu is likely to watch and move on. There’s no historical playbook to refer to, nor a political baton he can pass onto the central leadership. Silence amounts to moral risk. Speaking up might become an electoral blunder.
However, there’s little doubt that the town’s seemingly passive self-image stands to undergo radical change. It takes me back to an innocent question I accidentally discovered on Quora years ago while researching a piece: Is Shimla a safe destination for Muslims? I’m not sure if I’d be as dismissive of the premise of this question as I was back when I first read it.
Manik Sharma writes on art, culture and cinema, and was born and raised in Shimla. His X handle is @Manik1Sharma. Views are personal.
(Edited by Zoya Bhatti)