Yesterday when I arrived in front of our office building the street was jammed with protesters of some sort. They looked angry and they were shouting something in front of the police station. Then they started to move toward Anna Salai, one of the busiest streets in Chennai, escorted by fairly indifferent policemen. One officer offered me a one-word explanation: elections. Some coworkers that arrived later told me that traffic in most of the city was blocked, because protesters chose to sit down on Anna Salai right at the rush hour. Today on the front page of the newspaper is a picture of a burning van. Demonstrations turned violent.

One of the things about India (I should say South India, since the North is different in many ways and I still haven't seen it, I shouldn't be talking about it) that is difficult not to notice is absence of aggression in everyday life. Even in the chaos of Chennai traffic in which few well behaved westerners wouldn't lose their nerves, Indians keep their almost other-wordly calm. It seems that the only time when these people turn violent is when they are incited to do so by their political leaders. In general, this violence will be directed either toward a rival political party or another religious group, Muslims, that is, but in both cases it is encouraged and sometimes even directly initiated by politicians. So here we have some of the members of a religion which discourages even killing of plants and views other world religions as simply different paths to the same truth (in Hinduism others don't go to hell), being ready for the most gruesome crimes against other human beings. Why is that so? Where does that need for violence come from?