Bhowani Junction

by John Masters

  As Patrick and I walked along the line-side path, he seemed to be feeling round in his mind for something to say. I knew he wanted to tell me he was sorry for what he had done with Rose Mary, but he didn’t know how to begin. He is always tonguetied when it is important not to be. Those seconds were important to both of us, because I was feeling weak and afraid and suddenly very female.

  I wanted him to say, Don’t worry, don’t think, I’ll look after you. If he would say the right words, do the right action, I would go to him and submit.

  He needed looking after. I would look after him, and yet I would serve him, because I was surrendering. There was plenty of hatred and fear inside our little world, but they were of kinds that I knew and could face. The hatred and fear outside had proved too much for me. Patrick could face them because he was brave and stupid and never really felt what other people were feeling. Those were his qualities, and they would shelter me, and for that shelter—and his love—I would honestly give him everything I had to give. Even love, I could find to give.

  Patrick said, ‘What happened about the troop special, Victoria? How did those people get off the line?’

  I suppose he thought that was a safer subject to talk to me about than any other—certainly safer than Rose Mary.

  I said, ‘I don’t want to think about any of it. It was all horrible.’

  He said aggrievedly, ‘But I want to know. I did not see. I was up in the office.’

  I told him.

  He stopped and doubled up, and slapped his thigh and shouted with a loud bellowing laugh. ‘My God, that is good! That was Colonel Savage’s idea, was it? Well, I will never think so badly of him again. Oh, my God, that is priceless!’

  Still laughing, he looked at me. He saw I was not laughing. He said, ‘Don’t you think it is funny? That will make them feel foolish, I bet.’

  I screamed, ‘Can’t you understand anything? Can’t you see what they feel like? Or me? Stay here, don’t come another step with me.’

  I left him there and ran all the way home in the heat, so that when I fell on to my bed every stitch of my clothes was soaked dark with perspiration.

  TWELVE

  The headlines in the paper said: PARATROOPS ENGAGE MUTINEERS; and then, on the line underneath: WITH MORTARS, MACHINE GUNS.

  The date-line was Karachi. I read the story as if it were happening on a far-off island. The man who wrote the editorials was not angry with the R.I.N. mutineers. He was sad and hurt that they should have done it. It was an English paper published in the Punjab. He—or another man—was angry about the strike, though, and so were the people who wrote letters to the editor. ‘Pro Bono Publico’ and ‘Pater-families’ were very angry. Paterfamilias used sentences and thoughts that made me sure he was an Anglo-Indian.

  I was reading the paper in Mr Govindaswami’s study. He and Colonel Savage were talking quietly at the far end of the room about nothing in particular. It was four o’clock in the afternoon of Tuesday, May 21st, 1946. The men had had a short discussion on military matters when I first got there, but since then they had just been sitting and chatting. When I saw that they didn’t want me for any more note-taking I got up and walked over to read this newspaper, which was spread out on a table in the window.

  They didn’t waste their time like this for nothing in those days. I knew we were all waiting for something.

  I looked at the garden sleeping in the afternoon sun. There was an empty bench in the shade of a big dark-leafed tree. Mr Govindaswami was a bachelor. There should have been children and an ayah, and his wife perhaps, sitting on that bench. The railway ran behind that garden, and Bhowani city lay on the other side of the railway. I had seen and heard too much of the city these last few days. It murmured day and night like a kettle simmering on a sigri. There were little sandbagged posts at three or four of the main street crossings, and the police always moved in pairs.

  The night before, the city had flared up into a senseless shouting and throwing of bricks. Even more senselessly, it was the Mohammedans who had thrown the bricks at the Hindus. There were very few Mohammedans in Bhowani, and there were very many Hindus, and the Hindus had done the Mohammedans no harm. The Collector had had to call out the troops at 11 p.m. As soon as they arrived the police were able to break up the riot with a couple of lathi charges.

  I heard the familiar, distinctive sound of jeep engines, and the two men got up. Colonel Savage said, ‘Time to go now, Miss Jones.’ I knew better than to ask where to, but I knew this was not an ordinary ride.

  The Collector led the way in his Austin. We passed a small fleet of military vehicles, all their engines running, drawn up on the dusty edge of the Pike. As soon as the radio jeep swung out on to the Pike behind us, the lorry drivers engaged gear and followed. I folded my hands in my lap. I had seen that all the lorries were full of Gurkhas, but still I would not ask him.

  But I asked myself. What on earth were they going to do? Colonel Savage must have had great difficulties producing all those men. I knew exactly how many of the battalion were on duty—in the yards, on the detachments along the line, finding the mobile patrols and the quarter guard and barrack guards. These men must be everyone else—all the signallers and mortar men and anti-tank gunners and pioneers and what Colonel Savage called the ‘odds and sods’.

  The trouble must be in the city, I knew, so I was not surprised when the Collector’s Austin, immediately ahead of us, turned into Station Road It was a strange time of day to be there. The city reminded me of a bad-tempered bear, sprawled out all round us, dozingly asleep. Why should they want to disturb it?

  The lorries stopped in the station yard. The Gurkhas streamed out and fell in in thick ranks. Colonel Savage said, ‘Keep dose to me, Miss Jones.’

  The Collector went a pace ahead of us all, walking by himself, uncannily clean in his white suit as he picked his way carefully down a dusty lane beside the railway line. The Gurkhas pressed dose on our heels.

  We came to a place where the houses edged back from the railway, and a street coming in from the right became a sort of barren square. I saw perhaps a hundred Indians gathered there, and for a moment faltered in my pace. Colonel Savage said—rather, he snarled—‘Keep close!’ I tossed my head—it is an automatic gesture I cannot help—and went forward again.

  A section of Gurkhas moved round under the buildings and blocked off the street. The Collector forced gently through the crowd, pushing with his hands and calling out, ‘Make way there, please. Do not leave the square.’ Then I noticed for the first time that there were no police in that place. That was strange.

  We reached the far buildings. There was a kind of empty shop toward the end of the row nearest the railway. In front hung a faded blue sign with red lettering: UNION OF RLWY WORKERS OF INDIA. A table blocked off entrance to the shop, and behind the table sat Kartar Singh, the signals fitter. He was squatting on top of a bench, his feet on it. Two other Indians, seemingly coolies, stood in the shop behind him. There was a lot of money on the table and on the floor.

  Kartar straightened slowly until he was standing upright on the bench, and so stood much higher than the Collector. The Collector gazed up at him and said, ‘Jai ram, my friend.’

  Kartar said loudly, ‘Jai Hind to you. What brings you here?’ They both spoke Hindustani with an accent, the Collector’s guttural and throaty, Kartar’s tripping and tonguey. Mr Govindaswami’s native language would have been Tamil if he hadn’t made it English, and Kartar Singh’s was Punjabi.

  The Collector said, ‘A state of emergency has been declared by the Government of India, and you must all return to work. Your complaints have not been rejected. They have only been put aside. You can take them up again as soon as the emergency is over.’

  ‘I hear what you say,’ Kartar Singh said, and raised his voice. ‘Do you hear what the Collector says?’ The crowd murmured, ‘No,’ and Kartar Singh then repeated the message word for word.

  The Collector said, ‘Please instruct them to go back
to work. Otherwise I shall arrest you, and then use my best efforts to see that they do go back to work. I have authority.’

  Kartar Singh shouted to the crowd, ‘He says he has authority from government. What answer am I to give him?’ To the Collector he added, ‘I am their servant, not their master.’

  The men in the crowd said many things, some loudly, some doubtfully. They said, ‘Why should we go back?’ and, ‘I don’t mind,’ and, ‘Let our grievances be put right. Then we will go back.’ There was one persistent loud voice somewhere back in the crowd, which shouted, ‘Don’t go back to work, brothers, whatever Kartar Singh says. He is a lackey of the Railway Board and the British. Don’t go. Fight for your rights!’

  The voice stopped with a scream, and I looked round quickly. I saw three Gurkhas dragging a man through the crowd by his arms. Colonel Savage said, ‘He’s not really hurt. They hit him on the foot with a rifle butt.’

  The Collector said impassively, ‘What answer, Kartar Singh?’

  Kartar’s face reddened, and he became angry. He bawled at the Collector so that everyone could hear. ‘Go to hell, that’s our answer. We’re not going to work for you or the Railway Board or the British or anyone. We know our rights, and we won’t be bullied out of them.’

  ‘That is your last word?’ the Collector asked quietly.

  ‘Yes. Go to hell!’ Kartar Singh shouted.

  The Collector turned to Colonel Savage. He said, ‘Carry on then, please, Colonel.’

  Colonel Savage saluted, pulled out the whistle on the end of the black lanyard round his neck, and blew two short blasts. Some of the Gurkhas spread out in pairs among the crowd, others stayed in line across the street and the lane and along the low railway embankment. They had all unslung their arms. All the men who carried rifles now fixed their bayonets.

  The Collector said sharply, ‘Get down,’ pushed Kartar off the bench, and himself hopped up on to the table. The crowd began to panic, surging to and fro, separating, scrabbling on the ground for stones and sticks. The Collector raised his black hand. It was almost invisible against the dark shadows inside the shop, so that his white sleeve seemed to end in nothing, an amputated stump.

  He called out, ‘Do not move about. Do not attempt to throw anything or molest the soldiers. See, your leader is a prisoner. He is going to jail. The rest of you are going to work. No one need be hurt.’ A pair of Gurkhas held Kartar Singh firmly and pushed him back on to the bench so that all could see. He struggled and kicked and swore, but he could not escape.

  The Collector said, ‘The rest of you, file past here. The station coolies first. Hurry up, now. You—you’re a station coolie. Come here.’

  The man he pointed at came slowly forward, looking from right to left, letting the brick fall from his hand as a Gurkha raised his bayonet.

  From the centre of the crowd another voice yelled, ‘Don’t go! They can’t make us work!’ The coolie stopped and bent quickly for the brick he had just dropped. A bottle whirled out of the crowd and smashed against the house-front above the Collector’s head.

  Again I heard the shouting voice choke off in a scream. ‘Keep still, everybody,’ Colonel Savage said. He jumped up on the table beside the Collector and stood with legs braced and carbine pushed down at the crowd. ‘Keep still, keep quiet.’ Two Gurkhas dragged forward the man who had shouted and thrown the bottle—at least, I supposed that was the man. His eyes were closed, and blood trickled from a long gash in his bare stomach. Colonel Savage motioned with his hand, and the subadar-major scrambled up on to the table. Savage and the Collector got down.

  Subadar-Major Manbir was small and fat. His moustache was like an old Chinese mandarin’s, his nose was flat, and his nostrils were wide. He had no eyebrows, and his eyes were set at a ferocious Mongolian angle in his old, round, wrinkled face. The sun shone on the three bright rows of medal ribbons on his chest. He had a paunch, and he was carrying a tommygun loosely in his hand.

  He said softly, ‘Look at me.’

  Everyone looked at him. I looked at him. He was terrifying. He was a Tartar. He was everything the Tartars had done, all their sacking and killing and destruction, all that we had heard of mountains of skulls. The crowd sighed and fell quiet.

  He licked his lips slowly, frowned, and suddenly pushed forward the muzzle of the tommy-gun. He said, ‘Do what you’re told. I don’t mind killing the whole lot of you. I’ve killed more men than there are in this square.’

  His Hindustani was atrociously bad, but everyone understood every word he said. He went on, ‘But I’ve been ordered not to kill you unless you disobey the government. Come on, someone throw a brick. That would be a joke, wouldn’t it? Throw a brick, a bottle, anything!’

  He waited. No one moved. No one breathed.

  He suddenly raised his voice and roared, ‘Well, you——’ and he ripped out a single Hindustani word that made everyone jump—‘step forward then and do what you’re told.’

  The dam broke. The Collector mopped his forehead; the strikers hurried forward. As they came up, in twos and threes, pairs of Gurkhas stepped up beside them and escorted them forward. The Collector checked off names against a list lying on the table and gave them their strike pay. Then the Gurkhas took them off to their work.

  In half an hour the square was empty. The few remaining Gurkhas fell in, and the whole party marched back to the station yard. Kartar Singh, his face impassive and stern, walked with us, his hands tied and his legs hobbled. They put him in one of the empty lorries, and as the convoy returned up the Pike I saw that lorry turn into the Kutcherry. The Kutcherry is the enclosure where the jail, the treasury, the Collector’s court, and the civil district offices are.

  Our jeeps followed the Austin into the Collector’s compound. As soon as we were inside the building Colonel Savage took off his hat and sat down with a long ‘Pheeew! That was a tight corner, Govindaswami.’

  The Collector laid his hands on Colonel Savage’s shoulders and said in that precise voice, ‘My boy, you were a credit to your regiment.’

  Colonel Savage stood up, clasped the Collector’s right hand in his own, and stood a moment there with his jaw set and his chin up. For days on end those two men would be hard, impersonal, and grown up, and then suddenly this joke would make them act like schoolboys.

  Colonel Savage relaxed and said, ‘My upper lip needs unstiffening. It’s got set. I suppose you drink today?’

  Mr Govindaswami spread out his hands and said, ‘Beshak, huzoor, but I keep whisky for the sahibs who visit me. Miss Jones, you look as if you need a drink too.’ He called for his bearer.

  I took a whisky. I did need one. It had not been anything like as bad as the affair over the troop train, but it had been bad enough. I resented the highhanded way Colonel Savage had dealt with the strikers, who were all Indians. He wouldn’t have done it if they had been English, or even Anglo-Indian, I thought.

  We all sat down with our drinks. Colonel Savage looked at me and said, ‘Let your hak down. Swallow your pride. What do you want to know?’

  It must have shown in my face. I wanted to know how they thought they were going to get away with it. Colonel Savage said, ‘What you’ve just seen, or something like it, was done in three or four key railway towns all over India to-day.’

  I asked how that would prevent trouble. The Gurkhas couldn’t make the men work.

  ‘Oh, can’t they!’ Colonel Savage said. ‘They’re carrying three days’ rations. They’ll sleep when and where the men sleep, right with them.’

  I said, The union will get the Congress to protest in the Assembly, sir.’ I thought not only that they would, but that they should.

  The Collector said, ‘Some Congress members of the Assembly will protest. They will protest vigorously, and quite rightly, against peaceful Indians being driven to work at bayonet point. On the other hand, and not in public, they will advise the union to bow to force majeure and return to work. Then the union can start the strike again whenever they want to, after the
mutiny’s over. That’s the arrangement.’

  ‘The arrangement?’ I said incredulously.

  The Collector said, ‘Yes, the arrangement. The Congress high command are worried about their extremists. They’ve sent a posse of Congress luminaries down to Bombay simply to keep some of their own firebrands away from the sailors. Congress don’t want this kind of revolution.’

  ‘Then everything that happened in the square was pretence?’ I said. ‘And was Kartar Singh in on it?’

  The Collector said, ‘He was. None of the others. Though you heard the agitators shouting, giving hints. They knew. We’ve got a couple of them safe, but they’re only little ones. This has been a perfect example of what I told you about the first day you came here, Miss Jones. K. P. Roy and his Communists help to foment a perfectly legitimate strike. Congress approve of it—they have to or they’d lose their influence. But secretly the Communists are also fomenting a mutiny, which Congress do not approve of, having just realized that it’s soon going to be their Navy. But Congress mustn’t disapprove too loudly, or the sailors too will go elsewhere for encouragement. So Congress have been searching wildly for a way to get the strike ended and take the R.I.N. mutinies out of the Communists’ hands into their own, and at the same time to seem to support both the mutiny and the strike.’

  Colonel Savage said, ‘Gandhi ought to give me a bloody medal when he gets in the saddle up there—the Order of the Radiant Dhoti.’

  I sat there thinking. It was all very clear now. All of us were puppets of the people on top, and it didn’t make any difference whether the people on top were British or Indian. They argued and manoeuvred among themselves, decided which way to pull the lever, then pulled it—or had it pulled—and all of us below jumped and grimaced on our strings. There were no Anglo-Indians on top. Even Sir Meredith Sullivan was a puppet.