Was preparing a big writeup yesterday on our trip through the backwater canals of Kerala. But when we returned to Ft. Kochi we found every single shop shuttered tight and clumps of people loitering uncomfortably. When we dropped the bags off at our hotel, the staff gave extremely vague, extremely uncomfortable answers to what had happened. So we kitted up and headed out to the streets to find out ourselves.
I'm still gathering interviews and newspaper articles (I already found one significant discrepancy!), but it appears something like:
Unlicensed makeshift shops near the Chinese Fishing Nets had been recently ordered CLOSED by the Kochi police in advance of some new tourist zone development. Vendors had not closed down.
Police arrived on scene to remove the stalls. One of the stalls was burnt to the ground. [man-on-the-street said the POLICE burned it down; newspaper said the merchants themselves burned it down]
Angry people [vendors? "gangsters encouraging 'communal violence'"?] decided to reciprocate by burning down similar, licensed stalls owned by a 'prominent citizen' in the same area. They did.
Police riot squads, including giant prison buses and the 'Royal Flying Squadron' (jeep-based policemen w/ bamboo shields and long clubs), arrived and order was restored. It is not clear how big the actual 'rioting' ever was. Some 15+ people were arrested. All afternoon buildings were shuttered, although people wandered about gossiping and rubbernecking.
Regardless of their take on the incident, everyone sought to downplay its signifiance. Shouldn't be a suprise in a tourism-based industry.
It should be interesting to study this further. There seems to be a very complicated taxonomy of strikes, protest, and civil discord in India. {Perhaps not complicated when compared to their religions, but complicated compared to America, where you've got 'riot', 'strike', and 'kook'.} As well, it's all taken seriously--one very normal seeming guy plainly stated that the burning of the businessman's building was just.
These sort of beliefs shouldn't be suprising... In many sectors of the town there are banners for the DYFI (Democratic Youth Front of India), the Indian communist party. You don't have to look too long to see a lot of old 'hammer and sickle' stencils on alleys walls, either.
All in all sort of interesting. I think on the Riot Richter Scale, this would have registered as a 0.001, but still, it was my first civil action experience.
It also was valuable lesson about wringing more out our trips abroad--we should be interviewing people a lot more than we do. We found out much more by milling into the crowd and asking man-on-the-street than just photographic observation of the scene. I think it the disagreement over who burnt down the unlicensed vendor's tent is one of the most important details of the whole experience.
Posted by Nils Blutig at January 31, 2003 05:05 PM | TrackBack