The Great Indian Novel (31 page)

‘All the more reason not to, sir.’ The Principal Private Secretary was emphatic. ‘They’re insufferable enough as it is. Why should we give them the additional satisfaction of being consulted, when it is our nation that is under attack, our homes under threat, our armies and aircraft under fire? Personally, sir, I’d think it humiliating to have to seek the consent of the loincloth brigade before we placed His Majesty’s subjects here on a war-footing. In my view, it’s neither politically appropriate nor constitutionally necessary.’

‘Perhaps you’ve got a point there,’ the Viceroy conceded, rubbing a reflective chin.

‘With respect, indeed, sir. And think what propaganda the Kauravas would make of it. The all-powerful Viceroy has to ask them before he can declare war on another European state! It would be disastrous for our credibility with the man-in-the-street, Your Excellency.’

‘Hmm. I think you may be right there, Sir Richard. It’s just that I don’t think they’ll take it very well. And the last thing I need here at the beginning of a war is a new set of political convulsions on my hands.’

‘Don’t worry about a thing, sir. As Virgil put it,
“Experto
credite”.’

‘I hope you’re right, Sir Richard. As Horace reminds us,
“Nescit
vox
missa
reverti”.’

Horace was, of course, right - words once published cannot be taken back. When the declaration of war was made without the slightest semblance of consultation with the elected Kaurava ministries in the states, the Mahaguru’s followers resigned their offices
en
bloc.
An appointed official had no moral authority, they announced, to declare war on behalf of a nation whose elected representatives had not been consulted. The Kaurava Party, Dhritarashtra added, might conceivably have endorsed a request to join the Viceroy in a declaration of war, not so much out of a desire to come to Britain’s aid in her hour of peril, but simply because of the nationalist movement’s dislike of international Fascism. But the callous disregard by the colonial authorities of the legitimacy of the democratic process - a process, Dhritarashtra pointed out, by which Britain pretended to set such great store and in whose defence it was supposedly fighting - had made such an endorsement impossible. The Kaurava Party could not possibly remain in office in these circumstances, and it would urge all Indians not to cooperate with the war effort.

Vidur tried to advise his compatriots and relatives against such precipitate action: ‘Make your point by all means, but for God’s sake don’t resign,’ he pleaded with his sightless half-brother.

‘You do not understand politics, Vidur,’ Dhritarashtra told him.

‘Perhaps not, but I understand administration,’ my youngest son responded. ‘And one of the first rules of administration is, do not give up your seat until you know how much standing-room there is.’

But they did not listen to him, Ganapathi. A sheaf of identical resignation letters were wired to Delhi. As always, there was one governmental institution that never failed to do well out of a political crisis: the Post Office.

There were thunderclouds on the Viceroy’s brow the next morning, but Sir Richard persisted in seeing the silver lining.

‘Jolly good thing, this, if you’ll pardon me, Your Excellency,’ he beamed, his jowls quivering with satisfaction. ‘With one stroke, or rather the absence of one, we have cut the dhoti-wallahs down to size and got rid of a number of dangerous troublemakers from vital positions of power. Imagine Kaurava seditionists and anti-colonials in control of the Ministries of Supply, Food and Agriculture, Power and Electricity in the major provinces at a time of war and national peril - it could have proved disastrous.’

‘Indeed?’ The black clouds seemed to lighten a little on the viceregal forehead.

‘Instead,’ the Principal Private Secretary affirmed, ‘we can run these departments ourselves with tried and tested officials, or even’ - and he glowed at the ingenuity of the thought - ‘even place other parties in office from amongst the minorities in the legislatures. They will be beholden to us, and since the Kauravas have forfeited their responsibility we can hardly be blamed for turning to other elected Indians to do their job for them, can we? This will, in turn, weaken the Kauravas’ base of support, because they will no longer have any patronage to dole out, no more jobs for the boys, no more opportunities to operate the levers of power. And we will, therefore, have a weaker nationalist party to contend with in the years to come, after the war. Oh yes, Your Excellency, I see a lot of good coming out of your excellent decision not to consult the Kauravas.’

The Viceroy let the implications of his advisor’s last sentence pass. He was not yet convinced he wanted the paternity of his unilateral announcement ascribed to him. ‘I hope Whitehall sees it that way, Sir Richard,’ he replied, absently fingering the lingam and then drawing his hand away as if scalded by its procreative symbolism. ‘And I trust you will draft a suitable note on the matter to ensure that they do.’

He did; and Whitehall did; and as events unfolded it appeared that Virgil was right too, and it was advisable to trust the man of experience. For the Kauravas sat at home while the provincial legislatures carried on without them, gaining neither the advantages of being in office within the country nor those of leading a glorious crusade in exile as Pandu was doing. In due course, other parties and alliances staked their claims to form ministries in some of the provinces, and when it suited them, the British admitted these claims. The Muslim Group of Mohammed Ali Karna, which had failed to win a majority in any of the provinces, formed minority governments in three where the Kaurava ministries had resigned. They set about systematically increasing their following through every means at their disposal. One story quoted Karna as saying: ‘We shall win the hearts and minds of the people, however much it costs us.’

Thwarted, frustrated, excluded, the Kaurava Party chafed in its self-imposed irrelevance. Then, in a desperate and not entirely well-thought-out bid to regain the political limelight, the party met under Gangaji’s chairmanship and proclaimed a new campaign of civil disobedience. The message to the British was simple and direct: ‘Quit India.’

Oh, Ganapathi, how those two magic words captured the imagination of the country! The new slogan was soon over all the walls; it was chalked, scrawled, painted on notice-boards, on railway sidings, on cinema posters. Little newspaperboys added it
sotto
voce
to their sales cries:
‘Times
of
India.
Quit India.
Times
of
India.
Quit India.’ The magic refrain was taken up by chanting crowds of students, office-goers, political workers, hoarsely orchestrated by the Kaurava Party and its vociferous cheerleaders: ‘Quit - India. Quit! India. Quit? India!’ The words beat a staccato tattoo on British ears; they were the heartbeat of a national awakening, the drum roll of a people on the march.

It lasted twenty-four hours. Oh, there may have been sporadic resistance in some places for a little longer, but the organized movement to get the British to Quit India was snuffed out within a day of its proclamation. The Raj had been watching the Kauravas closely, very closely. It arrested the principal leaders within hours of the Quit India call, in one notorious case arresting a dilatory Working Committee member as he was coming out of the meeting-hall. (I had gone to the bathroom when the others dispersed, Ganapathi, if you must know.) By the next afternoon the lower-level organizers - the men who actually got the crowds out on to the pavements, who told them where to march and led them in their sloganeering - were behind bars. It was all over before it began.

At least the non-violent campaign was, Jayaprakash Drona, tutor to the Pandavas, abandoned his charges to wage a one-man battle against the Raj. He blew up two bridges and derailed one goods train before the long arm of the law caught him squarely on the tip of the jaw. He was interned in a maximum-security prison and the only significant result of his bravado was that the education of my five grandsons suffered.

So, Ganapathi, as Pandu strove and struggled in Berlin and Singapore, Gangaji and his Kaurava followers languished in prison while two very different individuals moved closer to realizing their ultimate ambitions of thwarting the Mahaguru.

Mohammed Ali Karna, with three provincial governments dancing to his tune and unchallenged as the most prominent Indian out of captivity, glowed with the lustre of quasi-divinity in which his followers had cloaked him. His name could no longer be taken in vain by lesser mortals: he was now referred to almost exclusively by the honorific ‘Khalifa-e-Mashriq’, or Caliph of the East, a choice of cognomen which ignored - indeed, blandly denied - his secular Anglicization. And as the Muslim Group consolidated its hold on, and its taste for, power, a vocal section of its adherents began openly calling for the creation of a new political entity where they could rule unchallenged, a state carved out of India’s Muslim-majority areas. This Islamic Utopia would be called Karnistan - the Hacked-off Land: simultaneously a tribute to its eponymous founder and an advertisement for its proponents’ physical political intent. The party’s younger hotheads had already devised a flag for their state. It would carry, on a field of Mohammedan green, a representation of the half-moon that throbbed on their caliph’s burnished forehead.

Yet there were already signs, if only we had known how to recognize them: signs that Karna, at his peak, had peaked. His long face began to look increasingly pallid at the post-sundown cocktails and receptions which celebrated and reinforced his prominence. As the darkness gathered Karna would withdraw even more into himself, until all that remained was the vividness of his birthmark against the pallor of his skin. Sometimes he would withdraw altogether, slipping out of the reception rooms where his awed followers gathered in respectfully distant clusters. It was thus that I found him once, shivering in an unlit garden while the hubbub of conversation continued on the terrace behind.

‘It
is
late, isn’t it?’ I ventured conversationally.

‘It is dark, Vyas,’ Karna replied.

‘You don’t like the dark?’

My question seemed to ignite a dying ember in him. ‘I hate the dark,’ he replied with sudden vehemence. ‘I hate the blackness of night. Even as a child, it was the sun I yearned for. The sun, enveloping me in its glow, setting me ablaze with its light. When the sun is up there I am warm, I am safe. But as dusk drops and the light fades, I feel the shadows creeping up behind my shoulder. A chill enters my bones; I find myself shivering. The nameless demons of the dark keep sleep from my eyes, Vyas. I can only rest with the light on.’ He seemed to pull himself together with a physical effort. ‘But let the morning come, let the flames of the sun touch my skin and scorch the dreadful memory of night from my brain, and I am myself again.’ He shook his head, as if realizing just in time whom it was that he was confiding in. The dapper lips twisted in deliberate irony. ‘Good night, Vyas,’ he said self- mockingly, inclining his head as he walked away, away from the starless night sky and into the well-lit acclaim that awaited him indoors.

If the khalifa-e-Mashriq constituted a growing threat to what Gangaji stood for politically, a slight, embittered figure was beginning, unknown to all of us, to cast an equally dangerous shadow on the Mahaguru’s person. Amba, the slim, doe-eyed princess whose nuptial bliss the Regent of Hastinapur had once so thoughtlessly blighted, was almost ready to exact her revenge.

She was no longer the lissom beauty of Salva’s fancy. Long years of neglect and frustration, of vainly seeking familial, royal and finally criminal help to redress her plight, had altered the soft lines of her face and body to reflect the hardness of her hate-filled heart. Yes, Ganapathi, the very twist of her mouth mirrored the warping of her soul. Only her eyes shone with the spirit of corrosive determination that had extinguished every other spark of her being.

For decades she had been obsessed with one thought only: how to get her own back on Gangaji. When all those she approached, from hesitant rajas to reluctant hit-men, proved unwilling or unable to take on her mortal enemy, Amba turned from human help to divine doxology. She meditated, prayed, arranged for a succession of priestly rituals of increasing obscurity and malevolence. She took up Tantrism, participating in rites where blood and semen spurted into yellowing skulls as acolytes screamed their frenzied invocations of the powers of Shakti. She practised austerities, sitting motionless for days in mortifying postures, her mind concentrating solely on her overwhelming clamour for retribution. At last - and she knew not in what state of consciousness this occurred, whether she was awake or dreaming or on that translucent plane where all experience is intensely, unverifiably personal - a dark figure appeared before her, erect above her half-closed eyes, bearing a trident and a look of infinite wisdom.