On the morning of the earthquake, Suresh Mehta, then the industrial minister for Gujarat, was in Bhuj. Realising what was happening, he took shelter in a door frame, as he had been told to do since he was a child in the event of an earthquake. After the shocks had subsided, he made his way first by car, until falling houses obstructed him, and then on foot to hoist the national flag, as was his official duty to the country for the day. He recalled how the air was full of dust, the town was wrecked, and how fallen buildings impeded his passage, but he was one of the lucky ones. Over two thousand people died in Bhuj, or about 1.7 per cent of the town’s population.
On the morning of the earthquake, Naranbhai, a tea trader, later recalled through welling eyes how he had put down his newspaper to investigate the ‘rumble’ outside (no one had ever told him to shelter in a door frame in the event of an earthquake). As he did so, his feet were crushed by a slab of concrete as the house tumbled around him. Unknown rescuers arrived some hours later and laid him on the roof of a neighbour’s house, which was now much lower than it had been early that day. For a few hours, he lay alone, in pain, and wondering what was to become of him. A few hours later, masked rescuers appeared with two injured women, one of whom was a local primary schoolteacher whose family was known to him. He talked to them, but just before dusk, he sensed that both women were dead.
Everyone can remember where they were and what they were doing on that ill-fated morning. They can recall the smells, sounds and images of the days following the disaster. These were terrifying times when no one could be sure of exactly what had happened and what might happen next. Much later, when I asked, people also called to mind particular snapshots of the disrupted landscape. It was not simply that things were not as they normally were; rather, while some areas of the town were in complete disarray, in other parts very little had changed. The normalcy, the everyday, was now made to appear odd, rendered visible and conspicuous by the adjacent ruination.
In the aftermath of the Latur earthquake in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra in 1993, many bodies were hastily placed in mass graves. This caused considerable retrospective consternation, especially among Hindu cultural organisations, and for those who remained living in the haunted and inauspicious areas. Local cadres of these organisations from across Gujarat were well prepared to pay close attention to the correct cremation of the dead in Bhuj. The management of mass death was mostly well ordered, and, aside from the usual conjecture of the media, there was no contagion from corpses. Supplies of wood quickly arrived. At least one truck made the long trip to North India to submerge ashes in the purifying waters of the Ganges. Muslims buried Muslims, and I am unaware of any great controversy over the ‘incorrect’ disposal of the dead, other than that in the haste some corpses were not properly identified, which led to certain bureaucratic and compensatory ambiguities further down the line.
When asked about the time of the earthquake, a great many people recalled the mass rites performed for the dead (called shraddh) by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in the first week of February 2001. Many also remembered struggling to gather the necessary clarified butter and Indian basil. Also present at these events were a number of local political leaders, and they took the opportunity to say that rebuilding Kutch would be a fitting tribute to those who had lost their lives. A number of people who were there remembered this sentiment, but rather more remembered the words of the speaker who said Kutch rocked its people to death as a mother might rock her child to sleep.
This turn of phrase was repeated to me an astonishing number of times in the early years of this research, sometimes as a way of remembering the rites for the dead, and at others as a general discursive strategy for talking about the earthquake. Later, while reading the archive of Kutch Mitra, I found that this statement had been reproduced in the newspaper’s original coverage of the death rituals. Both from the press, then, and from simple attendance at the ceremony, the metaphor grew in stature and became a popular way of talking about the earthquake.
Private organisations were at the forefront of the initial relief operations in Bhuj, often before the state, whose functions they took over in some places. They distributed aid, opened relief camps, and oversaw rescue and cremation operations. Their well-organised systems of communication and hierarchy, as well as the dedication and discipline of their volunteers, meant that many people in Bhuj associate the arrival of the organisations of Hindu nationalism with the initial relief after a major trauma. They became heroes, their work deeply valued by all. It is hard to say equivocally whether the organisations such as the RSS left such an impression on people because they were one of the first groups to make their presence felt in Bhuj or because the cremation and ritual services they administered were so important to those who survived. Either way, their presence in Kutch strengthened and expanded thereafter.
In the first weeks after the earthquake, local newspapers contained page after page of death notices. Death was the news, and the announcement of death in the pages of a newspaper was part of the last rites, a public announcement that the person was no more. In other ways, too, death became a public spectacle as the deceased and dying were placed on the ground for scrutiny and identification. Others were burned where they were excavated. Teams of masked men came with a magic spray that made the dead smell like lemons. A surprising number of people told of the hasty field amputations that were performed by emergency rescue crews to allow victims to be freed from the rubble. Many lives were saved, while others were lost in especially tragic circumstances. Eighteen members of a family from Mumbai, who had come to attend a marriage party in Bhuj, were killed when the apartment block they were staying in collapsed.
Five days after the earthquake there were still corpses littering the ground in the old court area. The press reported that the army sealed off the old town to prevent looting and contagion. Some people heard that bodies were lying unclaimed in the rubble of temples in the village of Dudhai (later to become Indraprastha, as we shall see) up to a week after the disaster. There were heart attacks and suicides, and deranged people blind with grief wandered hopelessly through the debris. The police fired warning shots over the heads of the crowd that gathered to protest over the unfair distribution of relief materials. Angry men discussed what action they might take against the contractors whose buildings had collapsed. The contractors fled town. In Ahmedabad, court and police cases were very quickly lodged against those thought to have built shoddy tower blocks.
Excerpts with the permission of Oxford University Press from The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India by Edward Simpson, Rs. 950, 330 pages
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On the morning of the earthquake, Naranbhai, a tea trader, later recalled through welling eyes how he had put down his newspaper to investigate the ‘rumble’ outside (no one had ever told him to shelter in a door frame in the event of an earthquake). As he did so, his feet were crushed by a slab of concrete as the house tumbled around him. Unknown rescuers arrived some hours later and laid him on the roof of a neighbour’s house, which was now much lower than it had been early that day. For a few hours, he lay alone, in pain, and wondering what was to become of him. A few hours later, masked rescuers appeared with two injured women, one of whom was a local primary schoolteacher whose family was known to him. He talked to them, but just before dusk, he sensed that both women were dead.
Everyone can remember where they were and what they were doing on that ill-fated morning. They can recall the smells, sounds and images of the days following the disaster. These were terrifying times when no one could be sure of exactly what had happened and what might happen next. Much later, when I asked, people also called to mind particular snapshots of the disrupted landscape. It was not simply that things were not as they normally were; rather, while some areas of the town were in complete disarray, in other parts very little had changed. The normalcy, the everyday, was now made to appear odd, rendered visible and conspicuous by the adjacent ruination.
In the aftermath of the Latur earthquake in the neighbouring state of Maharashtra in 1993, many bodies were hastily placed in mass graves. This caused considerable retrospective consternation, especially among Hindu cultural organisations, and for those who remained living in the haunted and inauspicious areas. Local cadres of these organisations from across Gujarat were well prepared to pay close attention to the correct cremation of the dead in Bhuj. The management of mass death was mostly well ordered, and, aside from the usual conjecture of the media, there was no contagion from corpses. Supplies of wood quickly arrived. At least one truck made the long trip to North India to submerge ashes in the purifying waters of the Ganges. Muslims buried Muslims, and I am unaware of any great controversy over the ‘incorrect’ disposal of the dead, other than that in the haste some corpses were not properly identified, which led to certain bureaucratic and compensatory ambiguities further down the line.
When asked about the time of the earthquake, a great many people recalled the mass rites performed for the dead (called shraddh) by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) in the first week of February 2001. Many also remembered struggling to gather the necessary clarified butter and Indian basil. Also present at these events were a number of local political leaders, and they took the opportunity to say that rebuilding Kutch would be a fitting tribute to those who had lost their lives. A number of people who were there remembered this sentiment, but rather more remembered the words of the speaker who said Kutch rocked its people to death as a mother might rock her child to sleep.
This turn of phrase was repeated to me an astonishing number of times in the early years of this research, sometimes as a way of remembering the rites for the dead, and at others as a general discursive strategy for talking about the earthquake. Later, while reading the archive of Kutch Mitra, I found that this statement had been reproduced in the newspaper’s original coverage of the death rituals. Both from the press, then, and from simple attendance at the ceremony, the metaphor grew in stature and became a popular way of talking about the earthquake.
Private organisations were at the forefront of the initial relief operations in Bhuj, often before the state, whose functions they took over in some places. They distributed aid, opened relief camps, and oversaw rescue and cremation operations. Their well-organised systems of communication and hierarchy, as well as the dedication and discipline of their volunteers, meant that many people in Bhuj associate the arrival of the organisations of Hindu nationalism with the initial relief after a major trauma. They became heroes, their work deeply valued by all. It is hard to say equivocally whether the organisations such as the RSS left such an impression on people because they were one of the first groups to make their presence felt in Bhuj or because the cremation and ritual services they administered were so important to those who survived. Either way, their presence in Kutch strengthened and expanded thereafter.
In the first weeks after the earthquake, local newspapers contained page after page of death notices. Death was the news, and the announcement of death in the pages of a newspaper was part of the last rites, a public announcement that the person was no more. In other ways, too, death became a public spectacle as the deceased and dying were placed on the ground for scrutiny and identification. Others were burned where they were excavated. Teams of masked men came with a magic spray that made the dead smell like lemons. A surprising number of people told of the hasty field amputations that were performed by emergency rescue crews to allow victims to be freed from the rubble. Many lives were saved, while others were lost in especially tragic circumstances. Eighteen members of a family from Mumbai, who had come to attend a marriage party in Bhuj, were killed when the apartment block they were staying in collapsed.
Five days after the earthquake there were still corpses littering the ground in the old court area. The press reported that the army sealed off the old town to prevent looting and contagion. Some people heard that bodies were lying unclaimed in the rubble of temples in the village of Dudhai (later to become Indraprastha, as we shall see) up to a week after the disaster. There were heart attacks and suicides, and deranged people blind with grief wandered hopelessly through the debris. The police fired warning shots over the heads of the crowd that gathered to protest over the unfair distribution of relief materials. Angry men discussed what action they might take against the contractors whose buildings had collapsed. The contractors fled town. In Ahmedabad, court and police cases were very quickly lodged against those thought to have built shoddy tower blocks.
Excerpts with the permission of Oxford University Press from The Political Biography of an Earthquake: Aftermath and Amnesia in Gujarat, India by Edward Simpson, Rs. 950, 330 pages
