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Interviewer: Tell us a little about yourself.
DD: My name is Dilip D'souza, and I am writer here in Bombay. I originally was trained as a computer scientist and an engineer and I lived in the US. I was working in that field for a number of years. But I returned here in 1992, then I had a computer science job, but I also started writing on the side. And now I am a full time writer.

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Interviewer: So what do you remember of the 1992-93 riots?
DD:You know, there are a lot of minor incidents that I remember. I was working in town at that time, with my software job, so I used to take the train to come home to Bandra West, where I stayed with my parents. But then, a few times when I heard it was dangerous to be traveling, I stayed at my then fianceé's, now my wife's place, my in-laws’ place, which at that time was at Grant Road, which was about halfway back. I stayed several nights there…
I joined a small group that actually went around looking at riot-hit areas and tried to compile a report. A lot of the victims were in JJ Hospital, people who were slashed by knives and things like that. We also visited various places where shops were being burnt.
In Charni Road, actually nearer Marine Lines station, you just come out of the station and down the flyover – there was a small shop that was burnt. So this young woman and I who were a part of this team, we were talking to the shopkeeper, when we turned around we saw this young guy racing towards us, which I can only describe it as threatening. I still have that memory in my mind. He didn't want us asking questions, and when I look back now, I suppose if he was annoyed or tried to push us around… I was bigger than him, I could have taken him in that sense But I just didn't. That's how scared we all were. I did not want to take any risks. So we just walked away, it's a regret I have even today. But it's full of memories like that.
I have very vivid memories of when I was taking a train between Mahalaxmi and Lower Parel. If I remember [right], it was a big wall on the side, a broken wall. And as the train passed, there was a huge crowd of men just standing there, many of them with big long knives. I remember it was a late afternoon or an early evening so the sun was glinting of those swords...I still remember those swords glinting, in the sunlight. So there are lots of memories like that, sort of visual memories you might say.

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Interviewer: Did you finish writing that report? 
DD: Yes, I did. It was published as 'Bombay's Shame' Our group was called 'Ekta Samiti'. Members had formed a committee and had spread out all over the city around the riot-hit areas. We compiled all our notes into this report. We just wanted to get an account of the violence out quickly.

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Interviewer: Were there any basic findings, or any sort of conclusion that came out of the report?
DD: You know, for the conclusion, I think any reasonable person at that time would have thought there was a lot of violence, but for me… the majority of people who spoke to us told us that they felt the Shiv Sena was responsible for a lot of that violence. And of course, at times Muslims were also attacking Hindus. But you know, we went to places at random, and we'd find all the Muslim-owned businesses on the street burned. Like on Lamington Road for example. Every single little hole-in-the-wall Muslim-owned electronic shop was burned and looted. So this was not as if we went and picked out particularly Muslim-dominated or Hindu-dominated areas. We just went where we felt there was violence. And over and over again, we found this. I remember one victim we met at JJ Hospital said, “You know, I am a Hindu, but I have this beard. So this crowd came up to me on a railway bridge and they just said, “Are you a Hindu or a Muslim?” And I said I am a Hindu, but they did not believe me. They beat me up and threw me off the bridge.” He landed on the rail track. By some miracle, he wasn't very seriously injured. I remember he had a fracture – I mean he was going to live, obviously. But that was the kind of madness that was going on at that time.

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Interviewer: You spoke about the Shiv Sena. Do you think the state was involved in the riots?
DD: [There is] what we call the first phase – that's the term we have come to use in subsequent years. At that time, it just seemed like one long sequence of riots in December and in January. The December riots were commonly believed to be the Muslim reaction to the Babri Masjid demolition on December 6th, and they came out on the streets and all these crowds were faced with cops. There was police firing and all which killed a lot of people. Now there are allegations that somehow that police firing was unjustified. There was a whole Suleman Bakery incident where they claimed to have found arms in there and so on. Some of it is not true at all. I do think, when you have crowds facing the police, there are going to be incidents. You cannot expect the police to remember some particular codes when that kind of... Sadly, there will be incidents when people get killed. There were a lot of things like that. But I think, as the weeks went on, the Shiv Sena came out and did some pretty awful things too. And the real complicity of the state is later, when the state just refused to take any action all these years against the perpetrators of the violence, was formed by any attempt to take action.

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Interviewer: How did the riots start?
DD: Well, like I said, I do think that it started with Muslims who were really upset about the Babri Masjid demolition coming out on the streets and protesting. I think it started as a protest and as these protests … Less than a month ago, there was a mob at Azad Maidan and mobs get like that, they get violent, the police has to take action. I think the very early phases [of the 1992-93 riots] were like that. Then increasing instances of mobs from both religions just attacking each other, or you know gangs going and attacking certain areas because they belonged to the other religion. I was also doing some work with a small group in Dharavi and one thing they asked me to help with was a man who was trying to get compensation from the government because his son had been killed. This is a few weeks after the riots had died down, but then he told me what had happened to his son on January 11th – I still remember that date – who was coming back from a bakery in Dharavi. Bakeries are largely Muslim. This young man must have been maybe 15-16 [years old] at that time. He was just set upon by a gang with knives and hacked to pieces. This man, Samiullah, was rushing around making this horrible runaround of desks, the bureaucratic desks in Old Customs House. And nobody was giving him his compensation. It was this tragedy that had happened to him, the whole tragedy had happened to the city, and that was compounded by this tragedy of callous and grasping officials. They told him, “How do we know who you are? Go back to your village in UP and get a certificate. How do we know it’s your son? Go back and get a certificate that he's your son. Then go and get a coroner certificate.” He paid a bribe in each of these cases. Then we'd go there [to Old Customs House] and they would say, "No, no, the cheque is not ready, come back in six days." At one point I went six or seven times myself. And they just fought us off. There was one time when we were sitting there, the cheque was on the table, and they wouldn’t hand it to us. They said, "No, no, we can't give it to you. Since you are from UP, we will post it to UP. You go back to UP to pick up your cheque." At which point I had to step in and ask to see the Collector. I was carrying one of my father’s cards. My dad is a retired IAS officer. I sent the Collector this card, at which point the he called me in and called the official and said, "Give him the damn cheque." He said it like that. These are just memories I have, but to me it gives me a sense of this state of complicity and what went on during those riots.

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Interviewer: So you see officials and the state being very passive, when it came to citizens. How do you see the judicial process at that time? How do you see the judiciary and the legal system dealing with the riots? 
DD: What has happened is that there is nobody being punished for those riots. There was one attempt that I was a part of. My father and a journalist actually filed a petition in court asking the government to prosecute Bal Thackeray for some provocative and inflammatory editorials in the Saamna. That was one of the big attempts that got a lot of press and so people were at least paying attention to all that. But in the end … I went to all those court hearings. It was very dispiriting, because one by one all the judges said, “No, no, we don't want to hear it ... It's adjourned for six weeks." The Shiv Sena lawyer would come and say, “I have to have an eye operation, I want six weeks off.” It [the extension] was given like that. And I got a sense of how the judiciary operates. In the end the judges finally said, “The editorials brought, the one that says all Muslims are effectively traitors, that's just a typo. And we can't take it seriously and so therefore, we won't take any action” and they threw out the petition. So, it wasn't at all a happy introduction to the judiciary system. There was this whole Srikrishna Commission, but the commissions of inquiry are not judicial processes so that was delayed in so many ways. I really feel the judiciary failed us when it came to it. Every institution, I think, failed us.

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Interviewer: Why do you think the Shiv Sena managed to get away … Do you think the judiciary was also complicit in not wanting them punished?
DD: Well, for one thing, I think the Shiv Sena has got away with a lot of things all these years because of the Congress, which has been in power in the state for most of these years.  Going back to the early days of the Shiv Sena, they [the Congress] always found it useful to let the Shiv Sena do the dirty work and never take any action against them. It’s almost a mutual kind of a feeling that they have. You know, the Shiv Sena, would do these things that would raise the temperature in a certain way and the Congress would try to mollify that, but they really want that stuff to happen because they want issues to keep bubbling. I think this was just more of the same. Of course the Shiv Sena came to power as a part of the BJP-Shiv Sena government after that. Then there was no question of any action against them because they were the government. But I think also it's just that there is so much of a hold that the Shiv Sena has on a certain kind of a Maharashtrian psyche that feels a particular angst that the Shiv Sena taps into. And I think some of that just gets translated into an overall reluctance to take any action against them. There is just too  much political baggage involved in actually doing it and actually taking action against them. So, I have no illusions about anybody any time soon taking any kind of action against the Shiv Sena for anything. It's not going to happen. And now there's the 'MNS' also, with Raj Thackeray. Nobody is going to take action against him either. That's just the way it is in this state.

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Interviewer: What kind of scars have the riots left on the city? Why would one want to remember an event of such a large scale – why would one want to review such a dark chapter? What do you think about A) the emotion that people still have about the riots and B) what do you think about the scars that have been left behind on the city?
DD: That's been another thing being said over and over again over the years, starting with within a few months of the riot. The Shiv Sena themselves – Manohar Joshi, when he became the Chief Minister, would say things like, "Oh, you know, there's water under the bridge. All those wounds have been healed. We shouldn't scratch at them anymore…" What does that mean? You know it doesn't apply to us in real life. If we really get wounded, none of us are really going togoing to say, "All right, okay, let’s just forget it and carry on,” and one year later my leg is falling off. I am not going to say, well, that's water under the bridge. You want some solution. There has to be some closure. Why does everybody want an Ajmal Kasab punished? Why can't you just say, “Water under the bridge, you know, it happened four years ago.” In the same way, I think there are people who are terribly traumatised and lost lost family members in those riots. They were terrorised just like anybody and they want some measure of justice. And I don't think a country that denies a whole section of people that kind of justice is a country that is going to be free of terrorist attacks. That's the bottom line. You keep denying people justice, you are going to have them lashing out in some way later.

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Interviewer: And do you think these scars have had any physical manifestations in the city or psychological manifestations on its citizens?
DD: Physically, yes. There have repeatedly been bomb blasts in the city and repeatedly, the police talks to those guys whom they catch and perpetrate these horrible blasts. They  say we feel like we have to take revenge, because the state is not punishing these people who attacked us, whatever that means. I mean I find this logic as repulsive as anything else. But the fact is, people say that. And so, there is this memory of what happened in 1992-93 in people’s minds and they use it to justify their actions. 10 years later, they got Gujarat. Until the state–all of us are willing to come to terms with the fact that a great injustice was committed at that time and that there has to be some resolution of that, I think we are just in for more and more attacks of terrorism, one way or another.

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Interviewer: Were you afraid when 2002 happened? That it might have a spillover effect in Bombay, like it did in 1992?
DD: Not really, but I can't quite answer why. I don't remember thinking it was going to happen. It just seemed like something that was tapping into a whole maybe, Gujarati psyche at that point of time and possibly the scars of 1992-93 were still so fresh that people didn't want to get into that here. I mean, that’s one of the explanations, but it maybe makes some sense. I don't recall ever being worried that it would spill over here.

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Interviewer: You know you mentioned right now about people maybe subconsciously not being able to reconcile with this. What do you think are the steps that can be taken, maybe on a State-level, and at an individual level to be able to reconcile with these events?
DD: I think we need some measure of justice, that's all. I mean, what has happened in the last week, with these convictions of [Babu] Bajrangi and [Maya] Kodnani, that kind of thing has to happen. Why hasn't that happened with the Bombay riots? In fact, why hasn't it happened with 1984? There were instances just like what Kodnani and Bajrangi did. It happened both those times, but nobody has been punished for it. Why? For 1992-93, as far as I can tell, there has been absolutely no process of justice in place. Nothing is happening.

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Interviewer: Do you think something like the South African model of reconciliation can work in a country like India?
DD: I think so, at some level, I think in some cases it has to be. That's the only way because there's so much vested in keeping people protected from their crimes that if you keep agitating to get them punished, it becomes fruitless. In the end, it's not going to happen. As much as someone like me wants to see that happen, it's not going to happen. So at some point, I think you too must have realised that too many powerful people want to keep too many things quiet. What is the next best step? I mean we have to move on in some way. What is the next best step? At least bring these guys together, give the criminals, the accused some immunity and you say, you come and confess. You face your victims and confess and let them...and you know, if we find the maturity to do that I think it would be a big, big step.

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Interviewer: What do you think of how the media covered Gujarat in 2002 countered with your memory of how the media covered the 1992 riots? Did you see any active difference, or an increased measure of sensitivity…?
DD: No, I don't think so at all. I remember reading reports from 1992-93, which were just as bad in every way, just as comprehensive of the violence as in 2002. The only difference was that there was a lot of television coverage in 2002. In 1984, there were more or less just newspapers. In 1992 there were newspapers and probably Doordarshan. I don't think there were any other channels then. In 2002, there were many more TV channels, and if you were to have it now, you'd have more online stuff. People would be tweeting and taking little mobile phone videos of all the violence… We have YouTube, pictures now… But I think that's the only difference.

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Interviewer: Do you feel the police in Mumbai – this is a question that has been brought up several times – that the police has a Muslim bias? Do you think this is true? 
DD: I think this is largely true. Who is the police recruiting from? They're recruiting largely from Maharashtrians here. A lot of them have allegiances to the Shiv Sena. They've been fed on all that propaganda, they read Saamna, I have seen policemen reading Saamna all the time. As yoi know, Saamna is full of this kind of invective all the time, not just during the riots. So if you grow up like that, you are going to have that bias. Having said that, I don't know, it’s worth bothering about only to the extent that I want to bother about that kind of bias in overall society. You know people have their biases. The task of a good police officer, I think, is to tell his men, “I don't care what biases you have, you have your anti-Muslim prejudices, that’s fine. You carry on with it in your personal lives, but when you're a police officer, you follow my orders and you act...you know without any fear or favour.” If there are police officers who can command that kind of respect and instil that kind of attitude, then that’s fine with me. The biases don't particularly bother me. But you have to have good officers like that, which is not always the case.

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Interviewer: Do you think the people's relationship with the police has also changed? Whenever we speak to people about their memories of Mumbai pre-1992, it's interesting that they usually recall it as being more liberal, or that they trusted the police a little bit more. Did you feel any personal change or do you think that the city's relationship with the police has changed since 1992?
DD: No, I don't think so. First, I want to react to your mention of people who think the city was more liberal... I don't think that's true at all. All this hatred and attitudes and prejudices were there and just because they were supressed before does not mean they were more liberal. It just means that it was suppressed. As for the police, I don't know. The police and citizens have always had a stressful relation all along. And I don't see much that has changed there. I think there has to be a fundamental change in police reforms. The police themselves have in fact  been asking for that in some cases. One big thing is to take their whole promotions and transfers apart and away from, political part of our society. That's one way you might find more citizen trust coming into it, but I don't see that happening. Politicians don't want to let go of it and there must be some senior police officers who would also want to keep that status quo as it is. So I don't really see any big change in the attitude towards the police.

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Interviewer: Why do you say that these kinds of biases were more supressed that time? 
DD: I wonder where all this came from. It's not that overnight, in 1992, December 6th, everybody suddenly starts feeling all this hatred. That doesn't happen. That's not logical, it doesn't make sense. Because none of us operate that way. People just grow up with a certain set of biases, and attitudes, which then got a chance to be expressed at that time. I really think, before 1992, some of us grew up in a little cocoon, where we like to think of Bombay as this cosmopolitan place and all, but that's because all of us were in that cocoon. We weren't out on the chawls of Parel or in Mohammad Ali Road. All of us who say that are the Malabar Hill crowd and all who like to think of themselves as Westernised and cultured and all. But ... really, we are not. If you're not willing to even go out and look at other cultures in our city, then in what sense are we cosmopolitan?

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Interviewer: You know we also spoke to a lot of people about the consequences of the 1992-93 riots, one of them being, for example, that there was a lot of migration to places like Mumbra. The interesting part was that some people felt it was positive for the city. To become ghettoised. What do you feel about that notion? 
DD: It's completely hairbrained. It's a tragedy people see it that way. To me, it's just a recipe for more trouble in the future. Where does the idea of trust come out of. It's only when you are able to talk to somebody else, to that group that you think you don't want to trust. If you do talk like that to people, you find eventually that they have fears and dreams and all just like you. They're other people. If you're willing to give yourself a chance to listen to those guys, you find that out. That's how we attack our own prejudices in our mind. But if we take away the opportunity to do that, ensuring that we hold on to all those attitudes is going to lead to more trouble in the future.

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Interviewer: Apart from ghettoization, do you see any other physical change in the city since 1992?
DD: Apart from this, what we called ghettoisation, a fine number of people left the city, I was reminded of that recently when there was all these students and workers from the North-East who suddenly left their homes in Bangalore and Hyderabad and Pune and went back. That happened in 1992-1993. There must have been tens of thousands of people who just got out from the city and went to VT and tried to get on to the trains going home because they were scared. That’s one kind of physical change I did see happening to some extent. I know a few people who left their homes here and emigrated. They just found it too frightening to continue to be here.
Well, you know after each of those big events – it's true and I think it will happen in the future too – the political party, the power that instigated this violence comes to power after that. It's because I think their own supporters get that much more charged up – fanatical, if you want to use that [word] – they make sure to go out and vote. And especially in a country where we have so many political parties, everybody knows that there's no need to aim for 50% of the votes. You just have to aim for the largest chunk and that gets you into power. That largest chunk could be as little as 25-30% in some cases. So, if you can fire up that 25-30% in the electorate that you think is yours, and they all come out to vote – there you are, you're in power. So I think it's very deliberately done, parties like this, which don't have any other ideology or pan-Indian view to offer us, this is what they do. They want to get into power. So they set off this rioting and killing which all of us suffer from, and then their supporters are so energised by that, they come to power in the next election.  And it's going to happen again, if you ask me.

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Interviewer: It has been 20 years now after the riots. Do you still find that there is a certain kind of apprehension among Muslim and Hindus? Would there be any sort of eruption in the future also?
DD: There is going to be an eruption in the future, no doubt. What form that'll take, I don't know. You know, in 1992-93, all of us had these fears. A lot of the Shiv Sena and Hindu people had this fear that there were going to be Muslims coming over on boats. So I know people who went and stood on the beaches in Dadar and Mahim and all, and were waiting there with arms, saying we want to fight off these Muslim invaders. Of course nobody came. And then correspondingly there were us so-called secular people. I remember Army generals coming and giving us talks about how you must protect yourself in your building and keep a hockey stick at home. If Shiv Sena gundas come into the building then find a way to go down and lock them into the building and call the police when they're trapped in the building. So, all this gyaan was being given to us ... and all these fears on both sides were mistaken. There weren't any Shiv Sena mobs that came and attacked us, there weren’t any mobs that came over on boats from Pakistan…
One thing that I feel has happened after the riots in all these years, actually starting fairly soon after the riots, is that there's been this whispering campaign, an effort to turn history around. Because what happened was that there were these riots in December and January 1992-93 and in March 1993, there were bomb blasts. The people who set off those bombs said they were in retaliation for the riots which is, I think, completely repulsive to hear. But there have been people who have turned that around and try to say that the riots actually happened after the bomb blast. And you know, of course riots are bad, but they were an understandable reaction to the blast. There are more and more people I find who say that. One guy who said that in one of his writings, Ashok Banker, he wrote something somewhere… Pavan Varma said [it] in one of his books, “Being Indian”… All the time you hear this. 
And I once got into an argument with someone, a fairly well known blogger who said this in one of his writings, and then at some point, he said, “All right, all right ... You take the history that you want. The dates can be what they are.” And I said what kind of nonsense is this? The dates are what they are, exactly. It's not that I have some idea of the dates and you have some idea and you have to choose between them. And I feel like this has happened because … if you get enough people to think that the riots happened after the blasts, then you think the riots were not that serious because they were a reaction to the blast. And the really terrible thing was the blasts. This book is an example of exactly that. This is a biography that of Manohar Joshi, who became the Chief Minister [of Maharashtra]. It's called “Sir Manohar Joshi”, and it was ... just to give you an idea, it was published in 1997. So, February 1997. Four years after the riots. Page 99 of this wonderful treatise on Mr. Joshi, here's this paragraph. "Bomb blasts at the Mumbai Stock Exchange and some prominent buildings in 1993 not only took several lives, but it turned the politics of the state upside down. And it touched off communal riots in several parts of the metropolis" and it goes on to talk about how Chief Minister Sudharrao Naik was judged to have failed to control them and Prime Minister [P.V. Narasimha] Rao, asked Sharad Pawar, his Defence Minister to take over the reins of power from Naik. So this happened, but was in reaction to the riots. At the time of the bomb blasts, Pawar was actually the Chief Minister already. Look at how this history has been turned around. This is what I mean. Here's a book that probably thousands of Shiv Sainiks have now bought and read because it's a biography of one of their heroes and it says this. And I just want to read out to you one more example, slightly related to that, of the same kind of thing.
I don't know if you remember in 1991, in September 1991, there was a cricket tour by Pakistan that was supposed to happen and the Shiv Sena didn't want it to happen so they went and dug up the Wankhede pitch and poured oil into the pitch and stopped the Pakistani team from coming. And that's actually what eventually ended up being the first time South Africa came [for a cricket match] post-Apartheid. They came here and played a series of one-day matches. That tour was organised because this Pakistan tour was cancelled. That is 1991 and the bomb blasts happened in 1993, a year and half later. See what's written here on page 206. “After the heinous bomb blasts in Mumbai by some agents of the underworld in 1993, the Pakistani cricket team was scheduled to play in the city.  Some youngsters were very upset about this and Manohar Joshi, though himself seething with fury at the blatant attempt by Pakistan to destabilise India, thought that the game should go on. He tried to mediate it, but he was on the verge of succeeding when some youngsters destroyed the pitch. The match had to be abandoned." See, he just turned this whole one-and-a-half year history around. It’s just so – I don't know what the word is – it's so disgusting, that people go to these kinds of lengths to turn our history around, just for their political aims. But, I won't be surprised if 15-20 years down the line, if people are asked whether they remember the riots, they’ll say, “There were bomb blasts, but there were no riots.” And if they do remember, [they’d say] it happened as a result of the bomb blasts, because of campaigns like this.