Monday 6th October 2008

Delhi’s streets are dotted with small huts with corrugated iron roofs. They sell sweets and cigarettes and paan: an addictive mixture of betel nut, tobacco and lime chewed by Indians that creates the red globs of spit found sporadically on the road.

It’s down such a road that our jeep drops us off. The newspaper’s offices are contained in a large concrete building. It would look non-descript in Birmingham, but here it looms above the vendors as they lay out their plastic jars and lines of fresh citrus fruit. Inside, the marble corridors and mirrored elevators are polished of every speck of street dust. Men stride up the stairs, alongside women who walk in tiny steps in their salwar kameez.

The news room is an open-plan office on the third floor. It is largely deserted this Monday lunchtime. Few people arrive at work before noon, and even afterwards it is barely half full. There is none of the manic buzz of a newspaper newsroom back home. Instead, people are gathered by the hole in the wall which constitutes the office canteen. Through it are passed hot thalis and samosas, and tiny steaming cups of chai. People stand in the doorway gossiping. Yet everything here will get done on time: a paper will be sent to the printers by deadline, and in the hand of 17 million Indians by tomorrow morning.

Downstairs is the online section, which like most newspaper website departments, is slicker, not to mention more recently refurbished. In the corner a man in a waistcoat and bow tie stands next to a coffee machine. He asks what you would like: cappuccino, latte? What he offers is pretty much the same no matter what your answer, and comes in a paper cup barely bigger than a shot glass. It gives you the feeling that whatever you are drinking is ever so slightly precious. It’s also a good excuse to get up from your desk several times a day for no apparent reason.

It takes us five hours to get our computers online. One technician comes up, and talks to another technician, who comes up and calls for another technician, who comes and calls for another. Whilst they are congregating around the workstation, we sit and talk to Subash. Subash is old and wise, and looks as if he should be sitting in a turban under a banyan tree. He is small and bony-armed, and one of his teeth sticks out of his gums as he speaks. He commands a quiet respect as he places his battered leather briefcase on the desk and sits wearily in his chair. He says he spends his mornings working and his afternoons reading The Hindu (the liberal Indian daily) and The Guardian (for his international news).

He tells us that he is working on some research about the recent sectarian violence.

All over India, sectarian violence has been increasing in intensity, and will probably continue to do so until the elections are over. No region has been quite so badly hit as Orissa, in the East of India. In the last few weeks Hindus have attacked the Christian minorities living there. Christians, who account for 5% of Indians generally, make up 14% of Orissa’s population. In Orissa, they own many missionary hospitals and schools, and provide badly-needed aid to people largely ignored by the government. Some conversions, of course, follow. Many Christians have fled to refugee camps, which have in turn been attacked and pillaged by Hindus. Riots have been frequent. Yet the local government refuses to send in police, and the central government will not interfere with the army. Just over a month ago, a Catholic nun was raped by a gang of Hindus, and a priest who came to her aid was likewise attacked. Then, two days ago a young child who had been taken in my missionaries was also raped. It was later discovered that she was, in fact, Hindu.

Christians have not responded simply because they are outnumbered and scattered. No one is given any support or aid from the government. But the work of Hindu fudamentalists serves only to polarise voters along religious lines in the lead up to the election. If they succeed, the BJP (India’s Hindu Nationalist party), is likely to come into power, as they did in 1998. That time, they ran the government until 2004, but not before secular tension reached boiling point. On 27th February 2002, 52 Hindu nationalists were burned to death when a mob set fire to a train in Godhra, Gujarat. When the local BJP government suggested that Muslims were to blame, riots broke out that left over 2,000 people dead and 12,000 people homeless. Several official enquiry bodies still cannot reach a conclusion.

Signs of religious tensions are by no means obvious on the streets of Delhi. Jain ‘Happy’ schools stand beside Hindu temples. Women walk through halal markets on their way back from puja – Hindu morning prayers. But in rural village, official poverty is at an average of 75%. Tribes and castes fight for civil service jobs, for land and for government food aid (a quarter of which is stolen before it reaches the people it should nourish). Here, Hindu fights Christian, not only because he stands for his religion but because he stand for his life, and those of his family.

Here in the newsroom, Subash considers these things gently. He is reflective, sorrowful. He looks into the distance for a long time before he puts his fingers to the keyboard. And when he does, he is ashamed that he has to bring tragedy to his readers.

“We try to write about good news,” he says, “or the answer to the bad. But right now, I don’t know what the answer is.” He shakes his head and straightens out two sheets of paper that lie on his otherwise sparse desk. Somewhere behind us, the gang of technicians is dissipating and we are back to our computers, where we jump onto our Gmail accounts as if it were years, rather than days, since we had last seen them.

Around the cafeteria hatch is the hum of gossiping voices. A man comes around with a silver tray containing more little cups of chai. At his desk, Subash sits, considering.