"DALIE LAMA" said a poster on one of the fleet of sleek, air-conditioned buses in which the Chinese embassy ferried its delegates to the Olympic torch run, with 'LIE' highlighted in red. For many media footsoldiers, however, watching these flag-waving Chinese getting easy entry into the fortress that was Rajpath (while they remonstrated with paranoid cops refusing to honour their media accreditation cards), it was the event itself that was the lie.
"It passed off peacefully," was the relieved official verdict. But it was the peace of the graveyard, enforced by more stringent security than ever witnessed at a Delhi venue. As we watched from a hard-won viewing post in the middle of "Ground Zero", the acres of green between Vijay Chowk and India Gate were efficiently cleansed. Two hours before the relay, the Delhi Metro workers, students, tourists, government employees hanging about waiting for a glimpse of Saif and Aamir, were all "disappeared" by cops into the radial roads around Rajpath.
And so, when the torchbearers arrived to position themselves on the 2.5 km route, waiting for their 30 metres of fame, their audience consisted of hordes of cops, straggly clumps of media and orderly rows of flag-waving Chinese. A thin, polite assemblage of dignitaries and schoolchildren waited at India Gate. While there were enough faces to make TV screens look busy, the impression, on the ground, was of an almost surreal sterility, barely relieved by uniforms, OB vans, police jeeps, cameras, and vehicles draped with Olympic flags.
Commercial sponsors tried to dress up the scene with banners, buntings and T-shirts. But the gaiety of pom-pom girls gyrating to tinny music for impassive cops was a forced one. The torchbearer positioned closest to us was alas, not Saif, but the Chinese consul-general from Mumbai. At some point, a flame changed hands, but with Chinese minders and Delhi policemen in newly issued faux-athletic tracksuits surrounding it, it was hard to get the full measure of this moment of Olympic glory, even from a few yards away.
A few kilometres away, however, at Raj Ghat and Jantar Mantar, and at many spaces in between, a noisy festival, infused with colour, chaos and even the phraseology ("zindabads", "murdabads", "halla bols" and "saath dos" chanted in Tibetan-accented Hindi) of Indian democracy had been playing out all day. Of all the national journeys that the Olympic torch has been on during its 2008 run, its brief Indian one is extraordinary for the sheer contrast it generated between a show of state power driven by the implacable might of the Chinese state, and the desperate, energised demonstration of people power by the largest Tibetan refugee community in any one country.
Undaunted by the absence of celebrities—apart from the odd politician of socialist hue—and determined to make April 17, '08, memorable in their own way, the Tibetans ploughed on with their alternative torch rally. Their torch was the traditional Tibetan butter lamp, and unlike the official torch, which remained unmolested on its brief, sanitised journey through Delhi, from airport to five-star suite to ceremonial boulevard, this one went back and forth between protesters and police. When it disappeared, three or four new torches emerged, and took the flame forward. Where was the indomitable Olympic spirit, one wondered—out there in the official parade ground, or here on the street?
By Anjali Puri and Omair Ahmad