The Great Indian Novel

by Shashi Tharoor

  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.’

  There is silence, Ganapathi, pin-drop silence. Gangaji folds his sheet of paper and puts it away amidst the folds of his scanty garment. He speaks again to the magistrate. ‘I have made my statement. You no longer need to postpone the hearing.’

  The magistrate opens his mouth to speak, but no words come out. He looks helplessly at the government pleader, who is by now completely soaked in his own sweat, and in a kind of despair at his complacent defendant. At last the judge clears his throat; his voice emerges, a strained croak: ‘I shall postpone judgment,’ he announces, with a bang of his gavel. ‘The court is adjourned.’

  There are cheers from the assembled throng as the meaning of that decision becomes clear: the magistrate does not know what to do!

  We carry Ganga out on our bloodied shoulders. The horses draw back, neighing; the soldiers withdraw, shamed by the savagery of their success; the fallen stagger to their feet; and our hero, hearing the adulation of the crowd, borne aloft on a crescendo of hope, our hero weeps as he sees how his principles have been upheld by the defenceless.

  Ah, Ganapathi, what we could not have achieved in those days! The magistrate was right not to want to proceed, for when reports of what had happened reached the provincial capital, immediate instructions came from the Lieutenant-Governor to drop all the charges. Not only that: the local administration was ordered to assist Gangaji fully with his inquiry. Can you imagine that? The satyagrahi comes to a district, clamours for justice, refuses an order to leave, makes his defiance public, and so shames the oppressors that they actually cooperate with him in exposing their own misdeeds. What a technique it was, Ganapathi!

  For it worked - that was the beauty of it - it worked to redress the basic problem. After the interviews with the peasants, the hearing conducted with the actual participation of district officialdom, and the submission of sworn statements, the Lieutenant-Governor appointed Gangaji to an official inquiry committee which unanimously - unanimously, can you imagine? - recommended the abolition of the system which lay at the root of the injustice. The planters were ordered to pay compensation to the poor peasants they had exploited; the rule requiring indigo to be planted was rescinded: Gangaji’s disobedience had won. Yes, Ganapathi, the tale of the Motihari peasants had a happy ending.

  That was the wonder of Gangaji. What he did in Motihari he and his followers reproduced in a hundred little towns and villages across India. Naturally, he did not always receive the same degree of cooperation from the authorities. As his methods became better known Ganga encountered more resistance; he found magistrates less easily intimidated and provincial Governors less compliant. On such occasions he went unprotestingly to jail, invariably shaming his captors into an early release.

  All this was not just morally right, Ganapathi; as I cannot stress enough, it worked. Where sporadic terrorism and moderate constitutionalism had both proved ineffective, Ganga took the issue of freedom to the people as one of simple right and wrong - law versus conscience - and gave them a method to which the British had no response. By abstaining from violence he wrested the moral advantage. By breaking the law non-violently he showed up the injustice of the law. By accepting the punishments the law imposed on him he confronted the colonialists with their own brutalization. And when faced with some transcendent injustice, whether in jail or outside, some wrong that his normal methods could not right, he did not abandon non-violence but directed it against himself.

  Yes, against himself, Ganapathi. Gangaji would startle us all with his demonstration of the lengths to which he was prepared to
go in defence of what he considered to be right. How, you may well ask, and I shall tell you. But not just yet, my impatient amanuensis. As the Bengalis say when offered cod, we still have other fish to fry.

  The Third Book:

  The Rains Came

  13

  ‘That’s the last bloody straw,’ the British Resident said. He was pacing up and down his verandah, a nervous Heaslop flapping at his heels. ‘Indigo inquiry, indeed. I’ll crucify the bastard for this.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ the equerry said unhappily. ‘Er . . . if I may . . . how, sir?’

  ‘How?’ Sir Richard half-turned in his stride, as if unable to comprehend the question. ‘What do you mean, how?’

  ‘Er . . . I mean, how, sir? How will you, er, crucify him?’

  ‘Well, I don’t intend to nail him to a cross in the middle of the village bazaar, if that’s what you’re asking,’ the Resident snapped. ‘Don’t be daft, Heas-lop.’

  ‘Yes, sir, I mean, no, sir,’ the aide stuttered. ‘I mean, I didn’t mean that, sir.’

  ‘Well, what did you mean?’

  Sir Richard’s asperity invariably made the young man more nervous. ‘I mean that when I asked you how, I didn’t really mean how, you know, physically, sir. When I said how I meant sort of what, you know, what exactly you meant when you meant to, er, crucify him . . . sir,’ Heaslop ended a little lamely.

  The Resident stopped, turned around, and stared at him incredulously. ‘What on earth are you going on about, Heaslop?’

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ replied the hapless Heaslop, backing away. He was beginning to wish himself back on the North-West Frontier, being shot at by the Waziris. At least there he knew when to duck.

  ‘Well, then don’t,’ Sir Richard advised him firmly. ‘There’s nothing as irritating when I’m trying to think as hearing you go on about nothing. Sit down, will you, and pour yourself a stiff drink.’ He gestured at a trolley laden with bottles and siphons which now stood permanently on the verandah.

  Heaslop sat gingerly on a lumpily cushioned cane-chair and busied himself with a bottle. Sir Richard continued to pace, his white sideburns, in need of a trim, quivering with the strength of his emotion. ‘This man has publicly confronted, indeed humiliated, the Raj. Which means for all practical purposes the King-Emperor. Whom I represent. Which means he has humiliated me.’

  ‘Er . . . I wouldn’t take it so personally, sir,’ Heaslop began.

  ‘Shut up, Heaslop, will you, there’s a good fellow,’ came the reply from the Resident, whose round red cheeks gave him the appearance of a superannuated cherub, albeit one whose wings have been trod upon by a careless Jehovah. ‘When I want your opinion I’ll ask for it.’

  The equerry subsided into a sulky silence.

  ‘He has humiliated me,’ his superior went on. ‘And he has made matters worse by drawing attention to his former position here, which means I shall be unwelcome in every planters’ club from here to Bettiah.’ He glowered pinkly at the enormity of the privation. ‘Never in the entire history of my family in India has such a thing happened to any of us. Not even to my brother David, who spends his time drawing pictures of animals.’

  He stopped in front of the young man, who was drinking deeply from a tall glass. ‘I must do something about this rabble-rouser,’ he muttered. ‘Presuming to usurp the legitimate functions of the district administration! Standing half- naked before a representative of His Majesty and inviting him, daring him, to pronounce sentence on his open defiance of the law! Serving on so-called “inquiry committees” and depriving honest planters of their livelihood! There has to be an end to this nonsense.’

  Heaslop opened his mouth in habitual response, then thought better of it.

  ‘Things are bad enough already,’ Sir Richard went on. ‘We have native lawyers declaiming against our rule in every legislative forum, even when they have been nominated to their seats for the most part as presumed Empire loyalists. We have had a nasty little boycott of British goods, with fine Lancashire cotton being thrown on to bonfires. We have even had bombs being flung by that Bengali terrorist, Aurobindo, and his ilk. But all these were, in the end, limited actions of limited impact. Ganga Datta shows every sign of being different.’

  ‘In what way, sir?’ Despite himself, Heaslop was intrigued.

  ‘The man challenges the very rules of the game,’ the Resident barked. ‘Paradoxically, by using them for his own purposes. He knows the law well, and invites, even seeks, its sanction by deliberately - deliberately, mind you — violating it in the name of a higher truth. Twaddle, of course. But dangerous twaddle, Heaslop. He appeals to ordinary people in a way the chaps in the pin-stripe suits in the Viceroy’s Council simply can’t. In Motihari they flocked to him, irrespective of caste or religion. Untouchables, Muslims, Banias all rubbing shoulders in his campaign, Heaslop! And he stands before them in his bed-sheet, revelling in their adulation.’

  Heaslop remained studiously mute. ‘You know what the fellow dared to say when the President of the Planters’ Club commented on the inappropriateness of his attire?’ Sir Richard rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a newspaper clipping. ‘”Mine is a dress,’” he quoted in mounting indignation, ‘”which is best suited to the Indian climate and which, for its simplicity, art and cheapness, is not to be beaten on the face of the earth. Above all, it meets hygienic requirements far better than European attire. Had it not been for a false pride and equally false notions of prestige, Englishmen here would long ago have adopted the Indian costume.” I ask you! Your precious Mr Ganga Datta would have the Viceroy in a loincloth, Heaslop. What on earth is that sound you are making?’

  For Heaslop, overcome by the image of Lord Chelmsford’s sturdy calves bared in Delhi’s Durbar Hall, was spluttering helplessly into his glass.

  ‘Drastic measures are called for, Heaslop,’ Sir Richard continued, unamused. ‘I’m convinced of that. This fellow must be taught a lesson.’

  ‘How, sir?’ Heaslop asked, in spite of himself.

  The Resident looked at him sharply. ‘That’s precisely what I’m trying to give some thought to, Heaslop.’ He lowered his tone. ‘We’ve capitulated too often already. Think of that terrible mistake over the partition of Bengal. We carve up the state for our administrative convenience, these so-called nationalists yell and scream blue murder, and what do we do? We give in, and erase the lines we’ve drawn as if that were all there was to it. That could be fatal, Heaslop, fatal. Once you start taking orders back you stop being able to issue them. Mark my words.’ He stopped pacing, and turned directly to his aide. ‘What action can we take? It must be something I can do, or recommend to the States Department, something in keeping with the gravity of his conduct. If he were still Regent I’d have his hide for a carpet. But I suppose it’s too late for that now.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Heaslop agreed reflectively. ‘Unless . . .’

  ‘Yes?’ Sir Richard pounced eagerly.

  ‘Unless it isn’t really too late,’ Heaslop said slowly. ‘I have an idea that, if it’s a question of our competence to act against him, we might be able to, er, catch him on a technicality.’

  ‘Go on,’ the Resident breathed.

  ‘You see, when Ganga Datta handed over the reign, I mean the reins, of Hastinapur to the princes Dhritarashtra and Pandu and retired to his ashram, he was obliged under the law to notify us formally that he had ceased to be Regent,’ Heaslop explained carefully. ‘But he was probably so busy organizing the marriages of his young charges as soon as they’d come of age, that he quite simply forgot.’

  ‘Forgot?’

  ‘Well, it happens, sir. In the ordinary course we’d hardly pay much attention to it. Many of the princely states are less than conscientious about observing the fine print of their relations with us. Indians simply haven’t developed, ah . . . our sense of ritual.’

  Sir Richard looked at him suspiciously. Heaslop did not blink. ‘But doesn’t the court at Hastinapur employ an Englishman as a sort of secretary, to atte
nd to this sort of thing?’

  ‘Well, yes, there is Forster, sir, Maurice Forster, just down from Cambridge, I believe. But he seems to, ah, prefer tutoring young boys to performing his more routine secretarial duties. I have the impression he doesn’t take many initiatives, sir. Never quite managed to get the hang of what India’s all about. Considers it all a mystery and a muddle, or so he keeps saying. He waits to do what he is told, and I suspect that if the business of the notification didn’t occur to the Regent, it wouldn’t have occurred to poor Forster, either.’

  ‘Hmm.’ The Resident’s round features softened with hope. ‘And what exactly does this permit me to do, Heaslop?’

  ‘Well, sir.’ Heaslop sat up, choosing his words carefully. ‘If we haven’t been notified that Ganga Datta has ceased to be Regent, then technically, as far as we’re concerned, he still is. I mean, despite any other evidence to the contrary, we’re entitled to consider him to be in full exercise of the powers of Regent until we have been formally notified otherwise. Do you see, sir?’

  ‘Yes, yes, man, go on.’

  ‘Well, sir, if he’s still Regent -’

  ‘He has no business going about preaching sedition outside the borders of the state.’ Sir Richard finished the sentence gleefully. ‘Conduct unbecoming of a native ruler. I like it, Heaslop, I like it.’

  ‘There’s only one thing, sir,’ the equerry added in a slightly less confident tone of voice.

  ‘Yes?’ The fear of bathos added octaves to the Resident’s timbre. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve overlooked something, Heaslop.’

  ‘No, sir. It’s just that what he did, sir, in Motihari, wasn’t exactly criminal, sir. The case was withdrawn. On the direct orders of the Lieutenant-Governor of the state. And then he was invited to join the official inquiry committee. It might be going too far, sir, for us to proceed against him for something Delhi doesn’t consider seditious.’