Incarnations

by Sunil Khilnani

  “But little by little”: Amrita Sher-Gil to Victor Egan, 1931, cited in Dalmia, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life, pp. 48–49.

  “I began to be haunted by an intense longing”: Cited in N. Iqbal Singh, “Amrita Sher-Gil,” India International Centre Quarterly 2, no. 3 (July 1975): 213.

  “Modern art has led me to the comprehension”: Amrita Sher-Gil to her parents, Sept. 1943, in Sundaram, ed., Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings, 1:165.

  “Europe belongs to Picasso”: Cited in Dalmia, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life, p. xiii; and in Vivan Sundaram, ed., Amrita Sher-Gil: Essays (Bombay, 1972), p. 15.

  “I have for the first time since my return”: Amrita Sher-Gil to her parents, Dec. 1936, in Sundaram, ed., Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings, 1:267.

  “It is slightly irritating”: Amrita Sher-Gil to Karl Khandalavala, June 15, 1937, in Sundaram, ed., Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings, 1:383.

  “cramping and crippling effect”: Cited in Iqbal Singh, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Biography (Delhi, 1984), pp. 71–72.

  “the drawing perhaps the most powerful”: Amrita Sher-Gil to her sister, Jan. 25, 1937, in Sundaram, ed., Amrita Sher-Gil: A Self-Portrait in Letters and Writings, 1:307.

  “best thing so far”: Cited in Singh, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Biography, p. 102.

  “her vivid, forceful, direct”: Malcolm Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time, vol. 2: The Infernal Grove (London, 1973), p. 48; cited in Dalmia, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Life, p. 72.

  “sugary … that rotten paper”: Cited in Singh, Amrita Sher-Gil: A Biography, p. 103.

  37. Subhas Chandra Bose: A Touch of the Abnormal

  “I had in some respects”: In Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose, eds., An Indian Pilgrim: An Unfinished Autobiography (New Delhi, 1997), p. 35.

  “Will the condition of our country”: Subhas Chandra Bose to Prabhavati Devi, 1912, cited in Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent: Subhas Chandra Bose and India’s Struggle Against Empire (Cambridge, MA, 2011), p. 23.

  “second to none”: Mohandas K. Gandhi, “How to Canalize Hatred,” Harijan, Feb. 24, 1946, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 83 (Ahmedabad, 1981), p. 135.

  “The blood of the martyr”: Subhas Chandra Bose, “My Political Testament,” letter to H. E. the Governor of Bengal et al., Nov. 26, 1940, in Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugata Bose, eds., The Alternative Leadership: Speeches, Articles, Statements and Letters, June 1939–January 1941 (Netaji: Collected Works, vol. 10) (New Delhi, 1998), p. 197.

  “It was in the voice”: Subhas Chandra Bose, “The Individual, the Nation, and the Ideal” (1929), in Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugata Bose, eds., The Essential Writings of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose (New Delhi, 1997), p. 97.

  “Nothing makes me happier”: Subhas Chandra Bose, letter to Hemanta Kumar Sarkar, Nov. 12, 1919, in Bose and Bose, eds., An Indian Pilgrim, p. 195.

  “Life loses half its interest”: Cited in Sugata Bose, His Majesty’s Opponent, p. 39.

  “The younger generation”: Subhas Chandra Bose to Kitty Kurti, Feb. 23, 1934, in Kitty Kurti, Subhas Chandra Bose as I Knew Him (Calcutta, 1966), p. 59.

  “The war had shown”: Bose and Bose, eds., An Indian Pilgrim, p. 74.

  “Bose’s appeal”: Joseph Goebbels, diary entry, March 2, 1942, cited in Romain Hayes, Subhas Chandra Bose in Nazi Germany: Politics, Intelligence, and Propaganda 1941–43 (New York, 2011), p. 215n.

  “enemies of British imperialism”: Subhas Chandra Bose, “The Fall of Singapore,” first broadcast on Azad Hind Radio, Feb. 19, 1942, in Sisir Kumar Bose and Sugata Bose, eds., Azad Hind: Writings and Speeches 1941–3 (Netaji: Collected Works, vol. 11) (New Delhi, 2002), p. 63.

  “fascist or imperialist”: In Sisir K. Bose and Sugata Bose, eds., The Alternative Leadership: Speeches, Articles, Statements and Letters, June 1939–January 1941 (Netaji: Collected Works, vol. 10) (New Delhi, 2004), p. 82.

  “spoilt child”: Mohandas K. Gandhi to C. F. Andrews, Jan. 15, 1940, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 71 (Ahmedabad, 1978), p. 113.

  do-or-die effort: See esp. Mohandas K. Gandhi, Speech at A.I.C.C. Meeting, Aug. 8, 1942, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 76 (Ahmedabad, 1979), p. 392.

  “It is a bad thing psychologically”: Jawaharlal Nehru, press conference April 12, 1942, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 12 (New Delhi, 1979), p. 226; cited in Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers Against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New York, 1990), p. 473.

  38. Gandhi: “In the Palm of Our Hands”

  “modest downward face”: V. S. Srinivasa Sastri to V.S.R. Sastri, Jan. 10, 1915, in T. N. Jagadishan, ed., Letters of The Right Honourable V. S. Srinivasa Sastri (Bombay, 1963), p. 41.

  “I should have passed him by”: Rufus Isaacs (Lord Reading) to Montagu, May 19, 1921, British Library Oriental and India Office Collections Mss. Eur.F.238/3; cited in Claude Markovits, The Un-Gandhian Gandhi: The Life and Afterlife of the Mahatma (New Delhi, 2004), p. 14.

  “It is not for me to say”: Gandhi, Indian Opinion, April 28, 1906, cited in Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India (New Delhi, 2013), p. 194.

  “dressed quite like a bania”: V. S. Srinivasa Sastri to V.S.R. Sastri, Jan. 10, 1915, in Jagadishan, ed., Letters of The Right Honourable V. S. Srinivasa Sastri, p. 41.

  “every known Indian anarchist”: Gandhi, “‘Hind Swaraj’ or the ‘Indian Home Rule,’” Young India, Jan. 26, 1921, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 19 (Ahmedabad, 1966), p. 277.

  “Indian school of violence”: Ibid.

  “We will assassinate a few”: Gandhi, “Hind Swaraj,” in Anthony J. Parel, ed., “Hind Swaraj” and Other Writings (Cambridge, 2009), p. 75.

  “As is Japan, so must India”: Gandhi, “Hind Swaraj,” pp. 26–27.

  “What is granted under fear”: Ibid., p. 76.

  “English rule without the Englishmen”: Ibid., p. 27.

  “What we need to do”: Ibid., p. 75.

  “The show of violence”: Reinhold Niebuhr, “What Chance Has Gandhi?,” The Christian Century, Oct. 14, 1930, p. 1275.

  “empire of opinion”: See, e.g., “Report of the General Committee for Public Instruction,” Friend of India, Oct. 27, 1836, cited in C. A. Bayly, Empire and Information: Intelligence Gathering and Social Communication in India, 1780–1870 (Cambridge, 1996), p. 2.

  “in the palm of our hands”: Gandhi, “Hind Swaraj,” p. 71.

  “like the coil of a snake”: Gandhi, “Neither a Saint nor a Politician,” Young India, May 12, 1920, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 17 (Ahmedabad, 1968), p. 406.

  “eccentricities, whimsicality, metaphysics”: Nathuram Godse, statement to the court, Nov. 8, 1948, reprinted as Why I Assassinated Gandhi, ed. Virender Mehra (New Delhi, 2014), p. 59, para. 69.

  39. Jinnah: The Chess Player

  “impossible to work”: Muhammad Ali Jinnah, “Statement on the Question of Democracy in India,” 1939, in Jamil-ud-Din Ahmad, ed., Some Recent Speeches & Writings of Mr. Jinnah, vol. 1, 5th ed. (Lahore, 1952), p. 99.

  “It is a sub-continent composed”: Muhammad Ali Jinnah to Mohandas K. Gandhi, Jan. 1, 1940, in Ahmad, ed., Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr Jinnah, 1:139.

  “a good claim to be”: Perry Anderson, The Indian Ideology (London, 2013), p. 77.

  “He wanted to discover himself”: Fatima Jinnah, My Brother (Karachi, 1987), p. 81.

  “religious gathering celebrating the advent”: K. R. Munshi, Pilgrimage to Freedom (Bombay, 1967), p. 18; cited in A. G. Noorani, Jinnah and Tilak: Comrades in the Freedom Struggle (New Delhi, 2010), p. 53.

  “Free institutions are next to impossible”: John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government (London, 1861), p. 289.

  “It is necessary to redistribute”: Muhammad Iqbal to Muhammad Ali Jinnah, May 28, 1937, in Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah: Allama Iqbal’s Views on the Political Future of Muslim India (1942; 3rd repr. Lahore, 1963), p. 19.

 
“federation of Muslim provinces”: Iqbal to Jinnah, June 21, 1937, in Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah, p. 24.

  “The Mussalmans were in the greatest danger”: Jinnah, speech at Aligarh Muslim University, Feb. 5, 1938, in Ahmad, ed., Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr Jinnah, 1:43.

  a “massacre” campaign: Jinnah, in Star of India, Jan. 4, 1937; cited in Venkat Dhulipala, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan in Late Colonial North India (Cambridge, 2015), p. 67.

  “atheistic socialism” of Nehru: Iqbal to Jinnah, May 28, 1937, in Letters of Iqbal to Jinnah, p. 18.

  “one as a numerical minority”: Jinnah, Presidential Address to Annual Session of the All-India Muslim League, Lahore, March 23, 1940, in Ahmad, ed., Some Recent Speeches and Writings of Mr Jinnah, 1:178.

  “a kind of Muslim Never-Never Land”: Office of Strategic Services, Research and Analysis Branch, report 112, “Pakistan: A Muslim Project for a Separate State in India,” Feb. 5, 1943, IOR:l/PJ/12/652; cited in Nisid Hajari, Midnight’s Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India’s Partition (New York, 2015), p. 42.

  40. Manto: The Unsentimentalist

  “Loot. Fire. Stampede”: Saadat Hasan Manto, “Khol Do,” in Manto: Selected Stories, trans. Aatish Taseer (Noida, 2008), p. 51.

  “too few leaders”: Manto, “Freedom,” in Manto: Selected Stories, p. 150.

  “Don’t say that a hundred thousand”: Manto, “Sahai,” in Manto Rama (Lahore, 1990), p. 20; cited in Ayesha Jalal, The Pity of Partition: Manto’s Life, Times, and Work Across the India–Pakistan Divide (Princeton, NJ, 2013), p. 20.

  “If you cannot bear my stories”: In Jisha Menon, The Performance of Nationalism: India, Pakistan, and the Memory of Partition (Cambridge, 2013), p. 149.

  “You have brought him to the wrong place”: Cited in Khalid Hasan, “A Manto Remembrance,” published on the Academy of the Punjab in North America website, Jan. 16, 2004; available at http://www.apnaorg.com/prose-content/english-articles/page-118/article-7/index.html.

  “I write because I’m addicted”: Manto, “How I Write Stories,” trans. Muhammad Umar Memon, The Annual of Urdu Studies 28 (2013): 367.

  “You can be happy here”: In Gyan Prakash, Mumbai Fables (Princeton, NJ, 2010), p. 146.

  “In the beginning”: Manto, Stars from Another Sky: The Bombay Film World in the 1940s, trans. Khalid Hasan (New Delhi, 1998), p. 2.

  “In any case, it didn’t evoke”: Manto, “Ten Rupees,” in Manto: Selected Stories, p. 25.

  “as blanched and lifeless”: Manto, “For Freedom’s Sake,” trans. Muhammad Umar Memon, in M. Asaduddin, ed., Black Margins (New Delhi, 2003), p. 117.

  “very bitter”: G. M. Asar, cited in Khalid Hasan, “A Manto Remembrance.”

  “This country, which we call Pakistan”: Manto, “Do Gaddhay,” in Aakar Patel, trans. and ed., Why I Write: Essays by Saadat Hasan Manto (Chennai, 2014), p. 134.

  41. Ambedkar: Building Palaces on Dung Heaps

  “A society, almost necessarily, begins”: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York, 2015), p. 96.

  “fools and knaves”: In Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World’s Largest Democracy (London, 2007), p. 146.

  “If you want to write what I tell you”: In C. B. Khairmode, Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar; cited in S. Anand, “Bhim Row,” Outlook, Dec. 5, 2005; available at http://www.outlookindia.com/article/bhim-row/229435.

  “All have a grievance”: B. R. Ambedkar, “Untouchables or the Children of India’s Ghetto,” in Vasant Moon, ed., Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches, vol. 5 (Bombay, 1987), pp. 101–102; cited in Christophe Jaffrelot, Dr. Ambedkar and Untouchability (New Delhi, 2005), pp. 36–37.

  “the bare man in him”: Ambedkar, interview with Francis Watson, Feb. 26, 1955, BBC Sound Archive.

  “I claim myself in my own person”: Gandhi, “Speech at Minorities Committee,” Nov. 13, 1931, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 48 (Ahmedabad, 1971), p. 297.

  “Apart from any other consideration”: In Sanjay Hegde, “A Nation Builder’s Pride of Place,” The Hindu, April 14, 2015; available at www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/sanjay-hegde-on-br-ambedkar-the-hero-who-built-an-independent-india/article7099218.ece.

  “empty soapbox”: Ambedkar, Cabinet resignation speech, Oct. 10, 1951, in Moon, ed., Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches, 14:1318.

  “greatest social reform measure”: in Moon, ed., Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar Writing and Speeches, 14:1325–26; cited in Gyanendra Pandey, A History of Prejudice: Race, Caste, and Difference in India and the United States (Cambridge, 2013), p. 68.

  “We are going to enter into a life”: Ambedkar, Speech to the Constituent Assembly, Nov. 25, 1949, in Constituent Assembly Debates, vol. 11; available at http://parliamentofindia.nic.in/ls/debates/vol11p11.htm.

  42. Raj Kapoor: The Politics of Love

  “Raj Kapoor was just an image”: Raj Kapoor, in Simi Garewal, Living Legend: Raj Kapoor (Siga Arts International, 1984).

  “a synthetic, non-existent society”: Satyajit Ray, Our Films, Their Films (New York, 1994), p. 12.

  “It was then”: Raj Kapoor, in Ritu Nanda, Raj Kapoor Speaks (New Delhi, 2002), p. 2.

  “pampered brat”: Ibid., p. 4.

  “So instead I put on the mask”: Ibid., p. 5.

  “Capitalists, black marketers”: In Nasreen Munni Kabir et al., The Dialogue of Awaara: Raj Kapoor’s Immortal Classic (New Delhi, 2010), pp. 116–18.

  “I didn’t know the implications”: Kapoor, in Nanda, Raj Kapoor Speaks, p. 3.

  “professional emotionalist”: Cited in Madhu Jain, The Kapoors: The First Family of Indian Cinema (New Delhi, 2005), p. 149.

  43. Sheikh Abdullah: Chains of Gold

  “We Kashmiris want to”: Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, Flames of the Chinar: An Autobiography, abridged and trans. Khushwant Singh (New Delhi, 1993), p. 78.

  “Quit Kashmir”: Abdullah, Flames of the Chinar, p. 79.

  “If I am able to carry on”: Abdullah to Nehru, Nov. 5, 1947.

  “Not a single member”: Amnesty International, “Denied: Failures in Accountability for Human Rights Violations by Security Force Personnel in Jammu and Kashmir” (London, 2015); available at www.amnesty.org.in/images/uploads/articles/Kashmir_Report_Web_version_%281%29.pdf.

  “transported into a strange world”: Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, The Blazing Chinar: An Autobiography, trans. Mohammad Amin (Srinagar, 2013), p. 47.

  “Islam in Danger”: Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity, and the Making of Kashmir (New Delhi, 2003), p. 228.

  “A time will come”: Abdullah, The Blazing Chinar, p. 223.

  “awaken the Kashmiri people”: Abdullah, The Blazing Chinar, p. 167.

  “by his bedside”: Abdullah, Flames of the Chinar, p. 74.

  “Sheikh Sahib, if you waver”: The Blazing Chinar, p. 368.

  “world has not seen a more glaring rape”: Sheikh Abdullah to Nehru, from Subsidiary Jail, Kud, May 15, 1955.

  “lure of American money”: Nehru, Aug. 1–2, 1952.

  “The members of Government should not speak”: Jawaharlal Nehru, “A Proposal for the Future of Jammu and Kashmir,” recorded by M. O. Mathai, July 31, 1953; in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, vol. 23 (New Delhi, 1998), pp. 303–305.

  “I suppose one has to do some things”: Indira Gandhi to Nehru, Aug. 10, 1953.

  “an open book”: Abdullah, Interviews and Speeches After his Release on 2 January 1968, Series 2, ed. G. M. Shah (Delhi, 1968), pp. 12–13; cited in Suranjan Das, Kashmir and Sindh: Nation-building, Ethnicity and Regional Politics in South Asia (London, 2001), p. 47.

  “Let every Indian search”: Abdullah, Interviews and Speeches, p. 13; cited in Das, Kashmir and Sindh, p. 47.

  44. V. K. Krishna Menon: Somber Porcupine

  “unpleasant mischief-maker”: M.G.L. Joy, British Embassy in Washington, DC, to C. T. Crowe, Far Eastern Dept, Foreign Office, Jan. 25, 1954, National Archives,
DO 35/9014, “Top Secret” File on Krishna Menon.

  “arrogant extremism”: Alan Burns, UK Delegation to the United Nations, New York, to Sir Thomas Lloyd, Colonial Office, March 1, 1954, National Archives, DO 35/9014, “Top Secret” File on Krishna Menon.

  “a lackey of the British”: Cited in Janaki Ram, V. K. Krishna Menon: A Personal Memoir (New Delhi, 1997), p. 101.

  “sombre porcupine”: Marie Seton, Panditji: A Portrait of Jawaharlal Nehru (London, 1967), p. 173.

  “dangerously persuasive”: As reported by British diplomats, M.G.L. Joy, British Embassy in Washington, DC, to C. T. Crowe, Far Eastern Dept, Foreign Office, Jan. 25, 1954.

  “transform[ing] the power relations”: Krishna Menon, India, Britain and Freedom (London, 1941); cited in T.J.S. George, Krishna Menon: A Biography (London, 1964), p. 124.

  “Don’t embrace us”: Henry Kissinger, “Conversation with Krishna Menon,” Jan. 8, 1962, Jan. 10, 1962, and Feb. 8, 1962, Komer Series box 418, Folder “India 1961–63,” John F. Kennedy Library.

  “Our work here should have”: Menon, letter to New Madras, Jan. 1930; cited in George, Krishna Menon: A Biography, p. 59.

  “There is also evidence”: Note on Krishna Menon, June 10, 1940, India Office Records, Indian Political Intelligence Files, L/P&J/12/323.

  “There is hardly anyone here”: Jawaharlal Nehru to Krishna Menon, July 5, 1939; cited in Seton, Panditji, p. 100.

  “extremist of the worst possible kind”: David Robertson, MP, to Leo Amery, Nov. 10, 1942, in Indian Political Intelligence Files, L/P&J/12/323.

  “Menon has no genuine Party loyalties”: Note on Krishna Menon, June 10, 1940, Indian Political Intelligence Files, L/P&J/12/323.

  “men who draw their incomes”: Krishna Menon, Letter to the Editor, New India (Madras), Jan. 17, 1937; cited in George, Krishna Menon, p. 53.

  “the same beliefs at much lower tension”: Isaiah Berlin to Sir Saville Garner and Paul Gore-Booth, Nov. 30, 1961, National Archives, DO 196/210.

  “Obviously very far from well”: Nehru, Jan. 17–18, 1951.

  “When the scales are balanced”: Jawaharlal Nehru, note to Deputy Minister of External Affairs, June 23, 1954, Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, 2nd series, vol. 26 (New Delhi, 2000), p. 309.