The Great Indian Novel (7 page)

We gave him something to chew and swallow, and the peasant, Rajkumar, told us his story. He was from a remote district on Hastinapur’s border with British India, but on the British side of the frontier. He wanted Gangaji to come with him to see the terrible condition of his fellow peasants and do something to convince the British to change things.

‘Why me?’ Ganga asked, not unreasonably. ‘I have no official position any more in Hastinapur. I can pull no strings for you.’

‘We have heard you believe in justice for rich and poor, twice-born and low-caste alike,’ the peasant said simply. ‘Help us.’

He was reluctant, but the peasant’s persistence moved him and in the end Ganga went to Rajkumar’s impoverished district. And what he saw there changed him, and the country, beyond measure.

I was there, Ganapathi. I was there, crowding with him into the third-class railway carriage which was all he would agree to travel in, jostling past the sweat-stained workers with their pathetic yet precious bundles containing all they possessed in the world, the flat-nosed, wide-breasted women with rings through their nostrils, the red-shirted porters with their numbered brass armbands bearing steel trunks on their cloth-swathed heads, the water-vendors shouting
Hindu pani! Mussulman pani
!’ into our ears, for in those days even water had a religion, indeed probably had a caste too, braving the ear- splitting shrieks of the hawkers, of the passengers, of the relatives who had come to bid them goodbye, of the beggars who were cashing in on the travellers’ last-minute anxiety to appease the gods with charity, and finally of the guards’ whistles. Yes, Ganapathi, I was there, propelling the half-naked crusader into the compartment as our iron-wheeled, rust-headed, steam-spouting
vahana
clanged and wheezed into life and heaved us noisily forward into history.

Motihari was like so many other districts in India - large, dry, full of ragged humans eking out a living from land which had seen too many pitiful scratchings on its unyielding surface. There was starvation in Motihari, not just because the land did not produce enough for its tillers to eat, but because it could not, under the colonialists’ laws, be entirely devoted to keeping them alive. Three tenths of every man’s land had to be consecrated to indigo, since the British needed cash-crops more than they needed wheat. This might not have been so bad had there been some profit to be had from it, but there was none. For the indigo had to be sold to British planters at a fixed price - fixed, that is, by the buyer.

Ganga saw the situation with eyes that, for all his idealism, had too long been accustomed to the palace of Hastinapur. He saw men whose fatigue burrowed into their eyes and made hollows of their cheeks. He saw women dressed day after day in the same dirty sari because they did not possess a second one to change into while they washed the first. He saw children without food, books or toys, snot-nosed little creatures whose distended bellies mocked the emptiness within. And he went to the Planters’ Club and saw the English and Scots in their dinner-jackets and ballroom gowns, their laughter tinkling through the notes of the club piano as waiters bearing overladen trays circled their flower-bedecked tables.

He saw all this from outside, for the dark Christian hall-porter who guarded the club’s racial character denied him entry. He stood on the steps of the clubhouse for a long while, his eyes burning through the plate-glass windows of the dining-room, until a uniformed watchman came out, took him by the arm and asked him brusquely to move on. I expected Ganga to react sharply, to push the man away or at least to remove the other’s grip on his arm, but I had again underestimated him. He simply looked at the offender: one look was enough; the watchman dropped his hand, instantly ashamed, eyes downcast, and Ganga walked quietly down the steps. The next morning he announced his protest campaign.

And what a campaign it was, Ganapathi. It is in the history books now, and today’s equivalents of the snot-nosed brats of Motihari have to study it for their examinations on the nationalist movement. But what can the dull black- on-white of their textbooks tell them of the heady excitement of those days? Of walking through the parched fields to the huts of the poorest men, to listen to their sufferings and tell them of their hopes; of holding public hearings in the villages, where peasants could come forth and speak for the first time of the iniquity of their lives, to people who would do something about it; of openly defying the indigo laws, as Ganga himself wrenched free the first indigo plant and sowed a symbolic fistful of grain in its stead.

Even we who were with him then were conscious of the dawn of a new epoch. Students left their classes in the city colleges to flock to Gangaji’s side; small-town lawyers abandoned the security of their regular fees at the assizes to volunteer for the cause; journalists left the empty debating halls of the nominated council chambers to discover the real heart of the new politics. A nation was rising, with a small, balding, semi-clad saint at its head.

Imagine it for yourself, Ganapathi. Frail, bespectacled Gangaji defying the might of the British Empire, going from village to village proclaiming the right of people to live rather than grow dye. I can see him in my mind’s eye even now, setting out on a rutted rural road on the back of a gently swaying elephant - for elephants were as common a means of transport in Motihari as bullock-carts elsewhere - looking for all the world as comfortable as he would in the back of the Hastinapur Rolls, as he leads our motley procession in our quest for justice. It is hot, but there is a spasmodic warm breeze, touching the brow like a puff of breath from a dying dragon. From his makeshift howdah Ganga smiles at passing peasants, at the farmers bent over their ploughs, even at the horse-carriage that trundles up to overtake him, with its frantically waving figure in the back flagging him down. Ganga’s elephant rumbles to a halt; the man in the carriage alights and thrusts a piece of paper at the ex- Regent, who bends myopically to look at it before sliding awkwardly down the side of his mount. For it is a message from the district police, banning him from proceeding further on his journey and directing him to report to the police station.

Panic? Fear? There is none of it; Ganga smiles even more broadly from the back of the returning carriage and we follow him cheerfully, bolstered by the courage of his convictions.

Gangaji enters the police
thana
with us milling behind him. The man in uniform does not seem pleased, either with us or with the piece of paper in front of him.

‘It is my duty,’ he says, taking in the appearance and attire of the former Regent of Hastinapur with scarcely concealed disbelief, ‘to serve notice on you to desist from any further activities in this area and to leave Motihari by the next train.’

‘And it is my duty,’ responds Ganga equably, ‘to tell you that I do not propose to comply with your notice. I have no intention of leaving the district until my inquiry is finished.’

‘Inquiry?’ asks the astonished policeman. ‘What inquiry?’

‘My inquiry into the social and economic conditions of the people of Motihari,’ replies Ganga, ‘which you have so inconveniently interrupted this morning.’

Ah, Ganapathi, the glorious cheek of it! Ganga is committed to trial, and you cannot imagine the crowds outside the courthouse as he appears, bowing and smiling and waving folded hands at his public. He is a star - hairless, bony, enema-taking, toilet-cleaning Ganga, with his terrible vow of celibacy and his habit of arranging other people’s marriages, is a star!

The trial opens, the crowd shouting slogans outside, the heat even more oppressive inside the courtroom than under the midday sun. The police, standing restlessly to attention outside the courthouse gate, some helmeted in the heat and mounted on riot-control horses, cannot take it any longer. Their commander, a red-faced young officer from the Cotswolds, orders them to charge the peaceful but noisy protestors. They wade in, iron-shod hooves and steel-tipped staves flailing. The crowd does not resist, does not stampede, does not flee. Ganga has told us how to behave, and there are volunteers amidst the crowd to ensure we maintain the discipline that he has taught us. So we stand, and the blows rain down upon us, on our shoulders, our bodies, our heads, but we take them unflinchingly; blood flows but we stand there; bones break but we stand there; lathis make the dull sound of wood pulping flesh and still we stand there, till the policemen and their young red-faced officer, red now on his hands and in his eyes as well, red flowing in his heart and down his conscience, realize that something is happening they have never faced before . . .

You think I’m simply exaggerating, don’t you, Ganapathi? The hyperbole of the old, the heroism of the nostalgic, that’s what you think it is. You can’t know, you with your ration-cards and your black markets and the cynical materialism of your generation, what it was like in those days, what it felt like to discover a cause, to belong to a crusade, to
believe.
But I can, don’t you see. I can lean here on these damned lumpy bolsters and look at your disbelieving porcine eyes and
be
there, outside the courtroom at Motihari as the lathis fall and the men stand proud and upright for their dignity, while inside - surprise, surprise - the prosecution asks for an adjournment. Yes, the prosecution, Ganapathi, it is the government pleader, sweating all over his brief, who stumbles towards the bench and asks for the trial to be postponed . . .

But, hello - what’s this? The accused will have none of it! The magistrate is on the verge of acquiescing in the request when Gangaji calls out from the dock: ‘There is no need to postpone the hearing, my Lord. I wish to plead guilty.’

Consternation in the court! There is a hubbub of voices, the magistrate bangs his ineffectual gavel. Gangaji is speaking again; a silence descends as people strain to hear his reedy voice. ‘My Lord, I have, indeed, disobeyed the order to leave Motihari. I wish simply to read a brief statement on my own behalf, and then I am willing to accept whatever sentence you may wish to impose on me.’

The magistrate looks wildly around him for a minute, as if hoping for guidance, either divine or official; but none is forthcoming. ‘You may proceed,’ he says at last to the defendant, for he does not know what else to say.

Gangaji smiles beatifically, pushes his glasses further back up his nose, and withdraws from the folds of his loincloth a crumpled piece of paper covered in spiky cramped writing, which he proceeds to smooth out against the railing of the dock. ‘My statement,’ he says simply to the magistrate, then holds it closely up to his face and proceeds to read aloud.

‘I have entered the district,’ he says, and the silence is absolute as every ear strains to catch his words, ‘in order to perform a humanitarian service in response to a request from the peasants of Motihari, who feel they are not being treated fairly by the administration, which defends the interests of the indigo planters. I could not render any useful service to the community without first studying the problem, which is precisely what I have been attempting to do. I should, in the circumstances, have expected the help of the local administration and the planters in my endeavours for the common good, but regrettably this has not been forthcoming.’ The magistrate’s eyes are practically popping out at this piece of mild-mannered effrontery, but Ganga goes obliviously on. ‘I am here in the public interest, and do not believe that my presence can pose any danger to the peace of the district. I can claim, indeed, to have considerable experience in matters of governance, albeit in another capacity.’ Ganga’s tone is modest, but his reference is clear. The judge shifts uncomfortably in his seat. The air inside the courtroom is as still as in a cave, and the punkah-wallah squatting on the floor with his hand on the rope of the fan is too absorbed to remember to pull it.

‘As a law-abiding citizen’ - and here Gangaji looks innocently up at the near-apoplectic judge - ‘my first instinct, upon receiving an instruction from the authorities to cease my activities, would normally have been to obey. However, this instinct clashed with a higher instinct, to respect my obligation to the people of Motihari whom I am here to serve. Between obedience to the law and obedience to my conscience I can only choose the latter. I am perfectly prepared, however, to face the consequences of my choice and to submit without protest to any punishment you may impose.’

This time it is our turn, the turn of his supporters and followers, to gaze at him in dismayed concern. The prospect of glorious defiance was one thing, the thought of our Gangaji submitting to the full rigours of the law quite another. Unlike its post-Independence variant, with its bribable wardens and clubbable guards, the British prison in India was not a place anyone would have liked to know from the inside.

‘In the interests of justice and of the cause I am here to serve,’ Gangaji continues, ‘I refuse to obey the order to leave Motihari’ - a pause, while he looks directly at the magistrate - ‘and willingly accept the penalty for my act. I wish, however, through this statement, to reiterate that my disobedience emerges not from any lack of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to a higher law, the law of duty.’