“Mujhe toh jada pata nahi, par woh kuchh Urdu mein mazhab ke khilaf likh rahe the,”said Sanjay. (“I don’t know much, but they were writing something against religion in Urdu.”) Sanjay owns a little tobacco shack, barely 10 meters from the Delhi Jal Board office wall, near Shahdara metro station. This is where artists, commissioned by the Delhi government, were to paint a mural. It should have been a simple beautification project, but on May 22, the artists were threatened and the art was defaced by locals who claimed to be members of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh.

If there’s one thing that’s evident from this incident, it is the confused relationship Delhi has with Urdu, and chances are that this extends to India at large. Urdu is one of the official languages recognised in the Indian constitution and it’s an official language of Delhi, which is why you can see signage in Urdu in various parts of the city. Thanks to the paranoia being spread by those inclined towards the Hindu Right, the language today is now being targeted as a symbol of foreignness that must be attacked.

Artists Akhlaq Ahmed and Swen Simon are from an organisation called Delhi I Love You. They were painting DJB office’s wall as a part of a public art project titled #MyDelhiStory, which includes Twitter India and Delhi government as partners. My Delhi Story involves painting poems written in Urdu, English, Hindi and Punjabi in public spaces. The artists were selected by Delhi I Love You through an online Twitter competition.

In that competition, an Urdu couplet by a Delhi University student (Zeeshan Amjad) was chosen as the one that would be painted on the wall in Shahdara. The couplet goes like this:

“Dilli tera ujarna, aur phir ujar ke basna.
Woh dil hai toone paya, sani nahi hai jiska.”
(“Oh Delhi, you rebuild yourself when you’re reduced to ravages. No city has a heart like yours.”)

However, the love that is in those lines for Delhi was lost to most people in the neighbourhood, and this happened for one simple reason: the couplet was written on the wall using the Urdu script.

“A few people gathered and they started questioning us. This must be around 11 am,” said Akhlaq, who is known by his nickname Shabbu. “Kya kar rahe ho? Kyu kar rahe ho? Hindi me kyu nahi likh rahe?” (“What are you doing? Why are you doing this? Why are you not writing in Hindi?) Ahmed told those who were harassing them about the project. When he showed them the Delhi government’s letter granting permission, he says they retorted with, “Yeh jagah Dilli sarkar ke baap ki hai kya?” (“This isn’t Delhi government’s personal property.”)

This is not how shopkeepers of the area like Sanjay saw what happened on May 22. A juice stall owner, who works right next to the wall, said, “They were trying to write something about a masjid. You can’t come to someone’s country and do something like that. Agar atankwadi hote toh? (What if they had been terrorists?) They were not Indian, they were Lahori.”

One of the artists — Simon — is indeed not from India, but neither is he from Pakistan. He is French and it’s inexplicable how anyone could confuse him for a South Asian. “After they thought I was Hindu, due to my nickname Shabbu, they verbally attacked Simon,” said Akhlaq. The gathered people verbally abused Ahmed and Simon, and although all this was happening in Hindi, Ahmed was mortified. “I did not want Simon to get into any trouble. He is a foreigner, you see,” said Ahmed.“What image of India would he carry with him back to France? What would he tell his friends?”

And so, over the incomplete couplet about Delhi’s ability to rise like a phoenix out of its ashes, Ahmed wrote what the gathered crowd wanted him to: Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, in Hindi.

What is interesting to note here is that although the shopkeepers in the area said that the artists were stopped by locals, no one said that they recognized the people who stopped Ahmed and Simon. One local who was present when the tussle started categorically said that the troublemakers were not from the area. “This road leads to the railway station,” he said. “It is not just used by the people from around here, many people use it. It is always crowded.” As a result, it wasn’t unusual for ‘outsiders’ to be there.

It’s odd that the disrupters didn’t ask for a slogan like “Bharat Mata ki Jai” or something contentious and provocatively communal. Instead, the demand made of artists commissioned by the Delhi government, was to paint the slogan of a central government initiative. Perhaps cleanliness is next to godliness for the men who refused to let Ahmed and Simon complete their mural. They also managed to raise a fuss and then get away before the police reached the spot.

The Station House Officer of Mansarovar Park Police Station said that his station got a call around noon about two people writing something on the DJB office wall. “We went there, but as they had permission from Delhi government, we released them,” he said.

Ahmed’s version is different. “First, the police was very rude to us,” he said.“They refused to listen to me when I told them that we had government permission. Their attitude changed only after we got a call from the Culture Minister of Delhi, Kapil Mishra, and made the police officer talk to him. Then they offered us a soft drink in the station.”

Simon and he had to spend around half an hour in the police station.

Ironically for a project that’s meant to beautify the city, the grey wall of the DJB looks like an eyesore now. The bright colours of the incomplete mural form a shapeless, lurid blob, with “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” barely legible through the orange and yellow. It’s a wall now that seems to invite posters and begs to be plastered over, even if it is with rubbish flyers.

Meanwhile, a few metres away is an official sign that reads “Office of the Executive Engineer” in four different, official languages of Delhi — Hindi, English, Punjabi and Urdu. No one’s raising an eyebrow at that. No one’s asked for that sign to be painted over.

Perhaps it’s the officious blue of the DJB’s sign that makes people ignore the flicks and curves of the Urdu script whose readership is falling in India. Or is this incident a sign of a newer anxiety, born out of a communal politics that’s intent upon establishing Indian identity and painting Islamic culture as foreign?

As things stand now, while Delhi I love You is sceptical about finishing up the mural, Mishra said that he will not let such acts stop the work. “The painting will be completed,” said Mishra. “No one can stop it. Moreover, we’ll try to make people aware about this gunda culture that some organisations are trying to spread in Delhi. This is not the culture of Delhi.”  He also questioned what kind of Hinduism is being taught in RSS.

Denying any communal tension in the area, Shahdara MLA, Ram Niwas Goel said, ” Everything is fine here. We have not noticed any communal development here.” According to him, the incident is an oddity in the otherwise peaceful locality. Nonetheless, the writing is on the wall.