The Raj Quartet, Volume 1: The Jewel in the Crown: The Jewel in the Crown Vol 1 (Phoenix Fiction) (43 page)

“The answer is that I don’t really know because out here I don’t rank as one. I never meet them, except superficially in my capacity as a member of the press at the kind of public social functions that would make
you
in beleaguered rationed England scream with rage or laughter. And then, if I speak to them, they stare at me in amazement because I talk like them. If one of them (one of the men—never one of the women) asks me how I learned to speak English so well, and I tell him, he looks astonished, almost hurt, as if I was pulling a fast one and expecting him to believe it.

“One of the things I gather they can’t stand at the moment is the way the Americans (who aren’t even in the war yet—if ever) are trying to butt in and force them to make concessions to the Indians whom of course the British look upon as their own private property. The British are cock-a-hoop that Churchill has taken over because he’s the one Englishman who has always spoken out against any measure of liberal reform in the administration of the Indian Empire. His recent attempt following the defeat of the British Expeditionary Force in France to lull Indian ambitions with more vague promises of having a greater say in the running of their own country (which seems not to amount to much
more than adding a few safe or acceptable Indians to the Viceroy’s council) only makes the radical Indians laugh. They remember (so my editor tells me) all the promises that were made in the Great War—a war which Congress went all out to help to prosecute believing that the Crown was worth standing by because afterwards the Crown would reward them by recognizing their claims to a measure of self-government. These were promises that were never fulfilled. Instead even sterner measures were taken to put down agitation and the whole sorry business of Great War promises ended in 1919 with the spectacle of the massacre in the Jallianwallah Bagh at Amritsar, when that chap General Dyer fired on a crowd of unarmed civilians who had no way of escaping and died in hundreds. The appearance of Churchill as head of the British war cabinet (greeted by the English here with such joy) has depressed the Indians. I expect they are being emotional about it. I’d no idea Churchill’s name stank to this extent. They call him the arch-imperialist. Curious how what seems right for England should be the very thing that seems wrong for the part of the Empire that Disraeli once called the brightest jewel in her crown. Liberal Indians, of course, say that Churchill has always been a realist—even an opportunist—and will be astute enough to change coat once again and make liberal concessions. As proof of this they point to the fact that members of the socialist opposition have been brought into the cabinet to give the British Government a look of national solidarity.

“But I wonder about the outcome. I think there’s no doubt that in the last twenty years—whether intentionally or not—the English
have
succeeded in dividing and ruling, and the kind of conversation I hear at these social functions I attend—Guides recruitment, jumble sales, mixed cricket matches (usually rained off and ending with a bun-fight in a series of tents invisibly marked Europeans Only and Other Races)—makes me realize the extent to which the English now seem to depend upon the divisions in Indian political opinion perpetuating their own rule at least until after the war, if not for some time beyond it. They are saying openly that it is ‘no good leaving the bloody country because there’s no Indian party representative enough to hand it over to.’ They prefer Muslims to Hindus (because of the closer affinity that exists between God and Allah than exists between God and the Brahma), are constitutionally predisposed to Indian princes, emotionally affected by the thought of untouchables, and mad keen about the peasants who look upon any raj as God. What they dislike is a black reflection of their own
white radicalism which centuries ago led to the Magna Carta. They hate to remember that within Europe they were ever in arms against the feudal
status quo,
because being in arms against it out here is so very much
bad form.
They look upon India as a place that they came to and took over when it was disorganized, and therefore think that they can’t be blamed for the fact that it is disorganized now.

“But isn’t two hundred years long enough to unify? They accept credit for all the improvements they’ve made. But can you claim credit for one without accepting blame for the other? Who, for instance, five years ago, had ever heard of the concept of Pakistan—the separate Muslim state? I can’t believe that Pakistan will ever become a reality, but if it does it will be because the English prevaricated long enough to allow a favoured religious minority to seize a political opportunity.

“How this must puzzle you—that such an apparently domestic problem should take precedence in our minds over what has just happened in Europe. The English—since they are at war—call the recognition of that precedence sedition. The Americans look upon the resulting conflict as a storm in an English teacup which the English would be wise to pacify if they’re to go on drinking tea at four o’clock every afternoon (which they only did after they opened up the East commercially). But of course the Americans see the closest threat to their security as coming from the Pacific side of their continent. Naturally they want a strong and unified India, so that if their potential enemies (the Japanese) ever get tough, those enemies will have to guard their back door as well as their front door.

“Working on this paper has forced me to look at the world and try and make sense out of it. But after I’ve looked at it I still ask myself where I stand in relation to it and that is what puzzles me to know. Can you understand that, Colin? At the moment there seems to be no one country that I owe an undivided duty to. Perhaps this is really the pattern of the future. I don’t know whether that encourages me or alarms me. If there’s no country, what else is left but the anthropological distinction of colour? That would be a terrible conflict because the scores that there are to settle at this level are desperate. I’m not sure, though, that the conflict isn’t one that the human race deserves to undergo.”

So there were no “sensible things” that Hari was able to tell Colin, but perhaps it was enough for each of them that over such a distance, of time as well as space, they still found it possible to make contact. There
was a saying among young Indians that friendships made with white men seldom stood the strain of separation and never the acuter strain of reunion on the Indian’s native soil.

“What would you do,” he asked Sister Ludmila, “if you had a letter from an old friend that showed you were suddenly speaking different languages?” Perhaps it is odd that Kumar should have remembered this earlier
Journey’s End
letter of Lindsey’s, remembered it well enough to have it on his mind when he asked this question, as if the later one which Colin wrote after his baptism of fire asking him to tell him some sensible things was of less importance than the letter written in the nostalgic neo-patriotic mood Hari had been puzzled by. But then the unexpected side of a man’s personality is more memorable than the proof he may appear to give from time to time that he is unchanged, unchangeable. The image of Lindsey as someone who spoke a new language had made its mark on Kumar, so that later he was able to say to Sister Ludmila:

“I should have challenged him then. I should have told him what it had really been like for me in Mayapore. I should have said, ‘We’ve both changed, perhaps we no longer have anything in common. It’s probably as ridiculous to believe that if I came back to Didbury now we should be at ease with each other as to believe that if you came out to Mayapore you would want even to be
seen
associating with me.’ Yes, I should have said that. I didn’t say it because I didn’t want to think it. We continued to exchange letters whose sole purpose was to reassure ourselves that there had been a time when we’d been immune to all pressures except those of innocence.

“When Colin came to India in 1941 and wrote to me from Meerut, I felt a sort of wild exhilaration. But it only lasted a very short while. I was resigned to what I knew must happen. If he had come straight to Mayapore there might have been a chance for us. But Meerut was a long way off. It seemed unlikely that he would ever be posted to a station close enough to Mayapore to make a meeting possible. And every week that went by could only add to the width of the gulf he’d realize there was between a man of his colour and a man of mine who had no official position, who was simply an Indian who worked for his living and lived in a native town. He would feel it widen to the point where he realized there was no bridging it at all, because the wish to bridge it had also gone. I remembered my own revulsion, my horror of the dirt and squalor and stink, and knew that Colin would feel a similar revulsion.
But in his case there would be somewhere to escape to. There would be places to go and things to do that would provide a refuge. He would learn to need the refuge and then to accept it as one he had a duty to maintain, to protect against attack, to see in the end as the real India—the club, the mess, the bungalow, the English flowers in the garden, the clean, uniformed servants, the facilities for recreation, priority of service in shops and post offices and banks, and trains; all the things that stem from the need to protect your sanity and end up bolstering your ego and feeding your prejudices.

“And then even if Colin had been strong-willed enough to resist these physical and spiritual temptations and to come to Mayapore to seek me out, where could we have met and talked for longer than an hour or two? Since the war began the black town has been out of bounds even to officers unless they are on official duty of some kind. I could not go to the Gymkhana. And what would
he
have made of the other club when it’s hateful even to me? If we had met at Smith’s Hotel there could have been an embarrassing scene. The Anglo-Indian proprietor doesn’t like it if undistinguished Indians turn up there. At the Chinese Restaurant officers are supposed to use only the upstairs dining room, and no Indian is allowed above the ground floor unless he holds the King’s commission. We could have gone to the pictures but he would have disliked sitting in the seats I would be allowed to sit in. There is the English Coffee House, but it is not called the English Coffee House for nothing. If he were stationed in Mayapore perhaps we could meet for an hour or two in his quarters. Or perhaps he could get permission to cross the bridge and visit me in the Chillianwallah Bagh. I considered all these possibilities because they had to be thought out. And of course I saw that the one constant factor was not so much the place of meeting but the determination to meet. And what friendship can survive in circumstances like that?

“From Meerut he moved to Ambala, and then to somewhere near Lahore. In his first letter he said that on the map Meerut didn’t look too far away from Mayapore. In his second he said he wondered if he would ever be close enough to make a meeting possible. In his third he did not mention the possibility of a meeting at all. And then I guessed that it had happened, in just three months. He had seen what he would only be able to call
my
India. And had been horrified. Even afraid. How could he know that I had also been horrified, also afraid? How could he
know that for three years I had hoped, longed, to be rescued, and had confused the idea of rescue with the idea of my Englishness and with the idea of my friendship with an Englishman? How could he know any of this? In one respect I was more English than he. As an Englishman he could admit his horror if not his fear. As an Anglicized Indian, the last thing I ever dared to do in my letters to
him
was admit either, for fear of being labeled ‘hysterical.’ And so I saw the awful thing that had happened—that looking at what he would have to call
my
India, the suspicion that I had returned to my natural element had been confirmed.

“Well, I say I saw it, then; but did I? Didn’t I still make excuses for Colin and excuses for myself? When there was no letter after the letter from Lahore, didn’t I say, ‘It’s all right, he’s not a civilian who has nothing to do but wake up, eat, go to work, work and come back home to see what the postman has brought.’ And then when the war came close, when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, invaded Siam and Malaya and Burma and even fluttered the English dovecots in Mayapore, didn’t I say to myself, ‘Well, poor old Colin is in the thick of it again’? And éven suffer pangs of conscience that I hadn’t been man enough to stand by something that was sure at least, my English upbringing, and join the army, fight for the people I had once felt kinship to even if out here they obviously didn’t feel kin to me? And didn’t I see what a damned useless mess I’d made of my life since 1938, sulking as badly as those poor clerks I despised, making no new friends, repaying Aunt Shalini’s kindness and affection with nothing that she would understand as love or even thanks?

“And then I saw them. English soldiers in the cantonment, with that familiar regimental name on their shoulder tabs. In the January of 1942. Familiar from the letters from Colin, first from Meerut, and then Ambala, and then from near Lahore. Captain C. Lindsey, then the name and number of the unit, followed by the address, and ending with the words India Command.”

“It was,” Sister Ludmila said, “the second occasion I saw him drunk that he talked so, about Colin. I told you there had been such an occasion. After he had been to the temple, with her, with the girl. This is when he told me these things. He had never told her. I said to her, that time she came to the Sanctuary to say good-bye, ‘Do you know of the
man Lindsey?’ and she thought for a while and then said, ‘No, tell me.’

“But I said, ‘It’s not important.’ It wasn’t important by then. To you perhaps it is important. So long after. ‘I saw him,’ young Kumar told me, ‘or at least I thought I saw him, coming out of the Imperial Bank, getting into an army truck that had the same insignia on its tailboard that those British soldiers wore on their sleeves.’ But he was not sure. And even then made excuses for him. Already at this time, you see, with the war suddenly brought to our doorstep by the Japanese, India had changed. There was this air of military rush and secrecy—and on the day he thought he saw Colin he went home expecting a letter saying, ‘Look, I’m stationed near Mayapore and sometimes come into the cantonment. Where can we meet?’ But there was never such a letter. So as the days went by he thought, ‘No, the man I saw was not Colin. Colin could not come near Mayapore and send me no word at all. India could not have done that to him. Not that. How could India do that to anybody, let alone to Colin?’