Once upon a time, Hate would surreptitiously crawl out of hiding, wearing a mask, to waylay people oblivious of its existence. It lacked the confidence to flaunt its menacing face. In a New India, with millions striving to become middle class, Hate realised it had been needlessly diffident after it saw the popularity of certain leaders soar because they publicly spoke its language.

I met Hate, unabashed in being Hate, one Sunday morning, when I booked a ride through a cab aggregator for Noida, an Uttar Pradesh city of gleaming towers and labour discontent abutting Delhi. In five minutes, a sedan arrived, driven by a person short in stature, with an overnight stubble I presumed he’d shave after his duty hours. It was obvious he had been working through the night.

“I thought you’d cancel the ride,” I said.

“I live in Noida, was returning home anyway,” the driver said, gliding down the road with sparse Sunday traffic.

“Is the money good in driving for aggregators?”

“This is the third of the cars I own. I hire out the other two,” he said in an unmistakably preening tone. “After I finish paying off the loan on this car, I will buy another,” he added. It’s possible my translation of his replies in Hindi isn’t exact. He was an example of an aspirational India, harnessing digital technology to make money.

“Driving isn’t the only job I do,” he said. His other job was to supervise a team handling accounts for a US company. “We have to work at night, their day. We can only speak with the company’s staff during its daytime office hours.”

“That would require you to speak English?”

“I’m comfortable speaking English,” the driver replied in English.

He said he had a BCom degree from a college in Delhi, was keen on a career in the Army, cleared the written examination but flunked the physical test. He continued. “Other than the weekend, I sleep four to five hours, that too in snatches, between the calls I must make,” he said, laughing.

“You work too hard,” I remarked.

As the car went up a flyover, he said, “For people like me, hard work is the only route to enter the middle class.” He switched gears to say, “India’s problem is that its politicians don’t pay attention to improving education, the only means for people like me to become middle class.”

“Kejriwal focussed on education, but still got voted out. Did you vote for him?”

“My vote is in Uttar Pradesh. Kejriwal concentrated on education only in the first five years of his rule,” he argued.

“That’s because Modi didn’t let him work,” I rebutted.

“Modi is the most to be blamed for the mess in our education system,” he said.

“And Adityanath?” I asked.

“He has at least frightened mafia dons into behaving—through police encounters, by demolishing their houses,” he said, glossing over my query about Adityanath’s contribution to education.

I said, “Adityanath can’t, shouldn’t decide who’s guilty. His administration has demolished many slums.”

“Demolishing the houses of the poor isn’t on,” he said, stalling the debate, perhaps wanting to concentrate driving on the zippy eight-lane Delhi-Noida Direct Flyway.

After we exited the flyway, I asked, “Where in UP are you from?”

“Etawah,” he said.

“The Etawah of Mulayam Singh Yadav and Akhilesh Yadav?” I sought to communicate to him that I wasn’t his typical urban passenger unaware of India’s geography and politics.

“Yes,” he said, smiling. “It’s from them that I learnt everything about politics. But when they sit with me, they don’t talk of caste, for they know I hate casteism.”

He, too, was talking in a coded language—that he didn’t belong to the Yadav caste, that they obsess about caste politics, but refrain from discussing it in his presence. Why? Was it because he’s from an upper caste?

“And religion?” I asked. “Are you opposed to the politics of religion?”

“I’m a kattar [fanatic] Hindu,” he replied. “Kattar,” he repeated, his voice rising to emphasise his politics.

I lapsed into silence.

“You know, I often cancel their rides,” he continued.

I wondered: did the lure of making money on his return trip home had him not cancel my booking? Or was his knowledge of Muslim names so limited that he could identify the religious identity of only a Mohammad or a Khan?

Overcoming my shock at the first glimpse of Hate, I asked, “Why do you hate Muslims?”

Hate recalled that he had once given money to a Muslim acquaintance to apply for a course. “He didn’t submit my application. He got through,” he said.

“Why would you hate the entire community for the misdeed of one of its members?”

Without pausing to think over my question, Hate said, “As they say, ‘pigs can only be pigs’.” The sentence sounded infinitely harsher in Hindi. To drive home his point, he added, “What do you say of the community that doesn’t treat even sisters as sisters.” He was referring to the prevalence of marriage among cousins in the Muslim community.

Neither he nor I spoke for the next five minutes it took us to reach my destination. After paying him the fare, I said, “By the way, I am Muslim.” I got out of the cab without looking at him. It was, I later concluded, my involuntary response to the possibility that Hate might smile and mutter, “I know. So?”

Ajaz Ashraf is a senior journalist from Delhi and the author of Bhima Koregaon: Challenging Caste.

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