Between A Man & A Mob

A young couple from different faiths. An irate crowd intent on violence. An honourable man brave enough to do the right thing.

- Rituparna Chatterjee

THE GARJIYA DEVI temple near Ramnagar in Uttarakhand is crowded with people on a sunny, summer morning. Ganga Dussehra, an auspicious Hindu festival to mark the descent of the river Ganga on earth, has drawn large numbers of devotees on this day (22 May) to the shrine, not far from Jim Corbett National Park. Among the teeming multitudes is on-duty sub-inspector Gagandeep Singh making his rounds and keeping watch.

At about midday, Singh’s attention is drawn to a growing cacophony of raised voices. Hindu devotees have gathered around a lean, bearded young man in jeans and a yellow T-shirt, worn under a collared shirt, gesticulating angrily. He is completely unaware of the growing size of the crowd surrounding him.

Concerned, Singh decides to step in to see what the matter is. It turns out that the man, identified only by his first name, Irfan, had come to the temple to meet his girlfriend, who happens to be Hindu. Both the man and the woman appear to be in their 20s. However, the crowd is enraged at the Muslim man’s “audacity” to date a woman from the Hindu community, and that too within the temple premises. They have dragged the couple from their meeting spot to the centre of the temple complex. The man is to be “taught a lesson”.

Far from backing down in the face of such blind anger, Irfan holds his ground, arguing with the crowd. Concerned by the rapidly escalating situation, Singh tries to intervene but struggles to be heard above the raised voices of the crowd that is fast beginning to look like a mob. Irfan and Singh are soon swarmed by men, some of them wearing saffron stoles and shirts, raising inflammatory slogans.

“ID dikha, ID (show us your identity card),” people in the crowd repeatedly demand. A video of the incident posted online shows Singh standing beside Irfan, trying hard to calm the furious protesters, when, suddenly, something snaps.