‘How about the Congress women’s groups?’ asked Maan.
Mahesh Kapoor clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘It’s not enough to have Congress women volunteers,’ he said. ‘What we need is a powerful woman speaker.’
‘Ammaji isn’t a powerful speaker,’ Maan pointed out with a smile. He tried to imagine his mother on a podium and failed. Her speciality was quiet work behind the scenes, mainly in helping people, but sometimes—as in elections—in persuasion.
‘No, but she’s from the family, and that makes all the difference.’
Maan nodded. ‘I think we should try to get Veena out to help,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to talk to old Mrs Tandon, though.’
‘The old lady doesn’t like my godless ways,’ said Mahesh Kapoor to his son. ‘We’ll have to get your mother to speak to her. You go back next week and tell her. And while you’re at it, tell Kedarnath to speak to the jatavs he knows in Ravidaspur to contact the scheduled castes in this area. Caste, caste.’ He shook his head. ‘Oh yes, and one more thing. For the first few days we should travel around together. Then we can split forces to get more coverage. The Fort has two jeeps. You can go around with Waris and I’ll go around with the munshi.’
‘When Firoz comes, you should go around with him,’ said Maan, who did not care much for the munshi and thought he might well lose his father votes. ‘That will make a Hindu-Muslim pair in each jeep.’
‘Well, what is keeping him away?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor impatiently. ‘It would have been much better if he had showed us around Baitar. I can understand why Imtiaz can’t leave Brahmpur.’
‘He’s had a lot of work recently,’ said Maan, thinking for a moment of his friend. He had been allotted Firoz’s room as usual, high up in the Fort. ‘And the Nawab Sahib?’ he countered. ‘What is his reason for deserting us?’
‘He doesn’t like elections,’ said Mahesh Kapoor shortly. ‘In fact, he doesn’t like politics at all. And after his father’s role in splitting up the country, I don’t blame him. Well, he’s put everything at our disposal. At least we are mobile. Can you imagine driving my car along these roads? Or going around on bullock-carts?’
‘We’re perfectly mobile,’ said Maan. ‘Two jeeps, a pair of bullocks, and a bicycle.’ They both laughed. A pair of bullocks was the Congress symbol, and Waris’s was a bicycle.
‘A pity about your mother,’ repeated Mahesh Kapoor.
‘There’s still a long way to go before the polls,’ said Maan optimistically, ‘and I’m sure she’ll be well enough to give us a hand in a week or two.’ He looked forward to the return to Brahmpur that his father had just suggested. It seemed to him that for almost the first time in his life his father trusted him; indeed, in some ways, depended on him.
Waris entered to announce that they were just on their way to the Socialist Party meeting in town. Did the Minister Sahib or Maan Sahib wish to come along?
Mahesh Kapoor thought that if Waris had organized some heckling it would be inappropriate for him to go. Maan was bound by no such scruples. He wanted to see everything there was to be seen.
17.6
The meeting of the Socialist Party began forty-five minutes late under a huge red-and-green canopy on the playing fields of the government school in Baitar, where most important large meetings in town were held. A few men on the podium were trying to keep the crowd entertained and patient. Several people greeted Waris, and he was delighted to be the centre of a little knot of attention. He went around introducing Maan and greeting people with an adaab or a namaste or a hearty slap on the back. ‘This is the man who saved the Nawabzada’s life,’ he announced so flamboyantly that even the robust Maan was embarrassed.
The socialist procession through the city had got held up somewhere. But now the roll of drums got closer, and soon the candidate was ascending the stage with his entourage. He was a middle-aged teacher who had been a member of the District Board for years. Not only was he known to be a good speaker himself but someone had also spread the false rumour that the great socialist leader Jayaprakash Narayan might possibly be coming to speak in Baitar—so there was a large crowd on the football field. It was seven in the evening, and beginning to get chilly; the almost entirely male audience, townsfolk and villagers alike, had brought shawls and blankets to wrap themselves up in. Cotton durries had been laid out on the ground by the organizers as protection against dust and dew.
Several local luminaries sat on the podium, which was lit in addition by several bright white lights. Behind them on a cloth wall was the huge image of a banyan tree, the socialists’ symbol. The speaker, used perhaps to controlling rowdiness in his classroom, had such a powerful voice that the microphone was almost superfluous. In any case it alternately acted up and broke down. From time to time, especially when the candidate got carried away, it set up a vibrating wail. Having been introduced and garlanded, he was soon in the full flow of pure Hindi oratory:
‘. . . And that is not all. This Congress government will not spend our taxes on pipes to bring us clean water to drink, but they will spend any amount of money on useless baubles. All of you have walked past that ugly statue of Gandhiji in the town square. I am sorry to say that however much we respect, however much we revere the man whom the statue is supposed to resemble, it is a shameful expense of public money. This great soul is enshrined in our hearts; why do we need to have him direct the traffic in the marketplace? But how can one argue with the government of this state? They would not listen, they had to go ahead. So the government spent this money on a useless statue that is good only for pigeons to defecate upon. If we had spent it instead upon public toilets, our mothers and sisters would not have to defecate in the open. And all this needless expense makes this useless government print more useless money, which in turn increases the prices of all the goods, all the necessities, that we poor people have to buy.’ His voice rose in anguish. ‘How can we cope? Some of us, like teachers and clerks, have fixed salaries, some of us depend on the mercy of the skies. How can we put up with this backbreaking expense—this inflation that is the true gift of the Congress to the people of this country in the last four years. What will help us take our boat across the river of life in these desperate times of reduced rations, of dwindling supplies of cloth, of the locusts of despair, of corruption and of nepotism? Why, I look at my students and weep—’
‘Show us how you weep now! One, two, three, testing!’ shouted a voice from the back of the crowd.
‘—I will beg my respected and supposedly witty brothers at the back not to interrupt. We know from where they come, from what high nest they swoop down to help in the oppression of the people of this district. . . . I look at my students and weep. And why? Yes, I will tell you, if I may be permitted to by the firecrackers at the back. Because these poor students cannot get work, no matter how good, how decent, how intelligent, how hardworking they are. This is what the Congress has done, this is what it has driven the economy to. Think, my friends, think. Who among us does not know a mother’s love? And yet today, that mother who, with tears streaming down her face, looked at her family jewels, her wedding bangles, her very mangalsutra for the last time—those precious things that are dearer to her even than life—and who sold them to support the education of her son—and who saw her son through school, through college, with such high hopes that he would do something worthwhile in life—she now finds that he cannot even get a job as a government clerk without knowing someone or bribing someone. Is this what we threw the British out for? Is this what the people deserve? Such a government that cannot make sure its people are fed, that cannot make sure that its students have jobs, such a government should die of shame, such a government should drown in a handful of water.’
The speaker paused for breath, and the organizers set up a shout:
‘The MLA from Baitar, how should he be?’
His supporters in the crowd shouted back in rhyme:
‘Ramlal Sinha, one such as he!’
Ramlal Sinha held
up his hands in a humble namaste. ‘But, my friends, my brothers, my sisters, let me speak further, let me unburden my heart of all the bitterness it has had to swallow these last four years of Congress misrule—I am not a man who likes to use strong language, but I tell you that if we are to prevent a violent revolution in this country, we must throw out the Congress. We must uproot it. This tree whose roots have sunk so deep, which has sucked all the water out of this soil, this tree has become rotten and hollow—and it is our duty—the duty of every one of us, my friends, to uproot this rotten and hollow tree from the soil of Mother India, and to throw it aside—and with it the inauspicious and rapacious owls that have made their dirty nests in it!’
‘Get rid of the tree! Don’t vote for the tree!’ shouted a voice from the back. Maan and Waris looked at each other and laughed, and there was much laughter from the audience too, including the supporters of the Socialist Party. Ramlal Sinha, realizing the blunder in his imagery, thumped the table and shouted: ‘This heckling is typical of Congress rowdyism.’
Then, realizing that anger would be counterproductive, he went on in a calm voice: ‘Typical, my friends, typical. We fight these elections under this sort of disadvantage and in this sort of shadow. The whole state machinery is in the hands of the Congress Party. The Prime Minister flies around in a plane at state expense. The DMs and SDOs jump to the Congress tune. They hire hecklers to disrupt our meetings. But we must rise above all this and teach them that they can shout themselves hoarse, and we will still not be cowed. This is not some two-anna party they are dealing with, this is the Socialist Party, the party of Jayaprakash Narayan, of Acharya Narendra Deva, of fearless patriots, not venal goons. We will put our ballot papers in the box marked with the symbol of the—of the banyan, the true representation of the Socialist Party. This is the strong tree, the spreading tree, the tree that is neither hollow nor rotten, the tree that is symbolic of the strength and generosity and beauty and glory of this country of ours—the land of Buddha and Gandhi, of Kabir and Nanak, of Akbar and Ashoka, the land of the Himalaya and the Ganga, the land that belongs equally to all of us, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians alike, about which it was truly said, in the undying words of Iqbal,
Better than all the world is this our Hindustan.
We are its nightingales, it is our rose garden.’
Ramlal Sinha, overcome by his rhetoric, coughed twice, and drank half a glass of water.
‘Does the nightingale have any policies of its own, or does it merely want to smear the Congress statue from on high?’ shouted a voice.
Get out of my class! Ramlal Sinha felt like shouting. Instead, he kept calm and said:
‘I am delighted that the brainless buffalo from the back has asked that question. It comes very fittingly from one whose symbol ought, more appropriately, to consist of two water buffaloes rather than two bullocks yoked together. Everyone can see how the Minister of Revenue has yoked himself to the biggest landlord in the whole of this district. If there was ever need for proof of collusion between the Congress Party and the zamindars, here it is. See them working together like the two wheels of a bicycle! See the zamindars grow still richer and fatter on the compensation that the government dispenses to them. Why is the Nawab Sahib not here to face the people? Is he afraid of their indignation? Or is he too proud, like those of his class—or too ashamed of the money of the poor, the public largesse that will soon be clinging to his hands? You ask me what are our policies. Let me tell you if you will allow me to. The Socialist Party has given the agrarian problem far more thought than any other party. We are not, like the KMPP, a mere discontented tail of the Congress Party. We are not a doctrinaire tool of foreigners, like the communists. No, good people, we have our own independent views, our own policies.’
As he ticked off his points on his fingers, he winched up his voice in tandem: ‘No peasant family will be allowed to possess land more than three times the size of an economic holding. No one who does not personally participate in cultivation will be allowed to possess land. The land will belong to the tiller. No one—not a Nawab, not a Maharaja, not a waqf or a temple trust—will be compensated for more than a hundred acres of appropriated land. The Right to Property in the Constitution will have to go: it is a barrier to just distribution of wealth. To the workers we promise Social Security which will include protection against disability, sickness, unemployment, and old age. To women we guarantee equal pay for equal work, effective universal education, and a civil code that will grant them equal rights.’
‘Do you want to take our women out of purdah?’ demanded an indignant voice.
‘Let me finish; don’t shoot your cannon before it’s loaded. Listen to what I have to say, then I will happily answer any and all of your questions. To the minorities, let me say: we guarantee full protection, I repeat, full protection for your language, your script and your culture. And we must break our last ties with the British. We cannot remain in the anglophile Nehru’s beloved colonialist and imperialist Commonwealth, in the name of whose head, King George, he himself was so often arrested, and whose boots he now desires to lick. Let us finish off with the old ways once and for all. Let us burn to ash once and for all the party of greed and favouritism, the Congress, that has brought the country to the edge of disaster. Take your ghee and sandalwood, my friends, if you can still afford it, or just bring yourselves and your families, and come to the cremation ground on the 30th of January, the day of the poll in this constituency, and let the corpse of the demon party be cremated there once and for all. Jai Hind.’
‘Jai Hind!’ roared the crowd.
‘Baitar ka MLA kaisa ho?’ cried someone from the podium.
‘Ramlal Sinha jaisa ho!’ shouted the crowd.
This antiphonal chant went on for a couple of minutes while the candidate folded his hands respectfully and bowed to the audience.
Maan looked at Waris, but Waris was laughing, and did not appear in the least worried.
‘The town is one thing,’ said Waris. ‘It’s in the villages that we will knock them out. Tomorrow our work begins. I will make sure you get a good dinner.’
He slapped Maan on the back.
17.7
Before going to bed, Maan looked at the picture that Firoz kept on his table: the picture of the Nawab Sahib, his wife, and their three children, with Firoz in particular looking very intently at the camera with his head tilted. The owl called out, reminding Maan of the speech he had just heard. He realized with a mild sense of shock that he had forgotten to bring any whisky with him. But nevertheless, in a few minutes, he was fast asleep.
The next day was long and dusty and exhausting. They travelled by jeep along pitted and petering tracks to an endless succession of villages, where Waris introduced them to an endless number of headmen, Congress Party village-level workers, heads of caste ‘biradaris’ or communities, imams, pandits, and local bigwigs. Mahesh Kapoor’s style of speech, in contrast to the political oiliness he detested, was clipped, abrupt, even somewhat arrogant, but quite straightforward; it was not taken amiss by most of those who met him. He gave short talks on various issues, and answered the questions of the villagers who had gathered to hear him. He asked very simply for their vote. Maan, Waris, and he drank innumerable cups of tea and sherbet. Sometimes the women came out, sometimes they stayed in and peeped out from behind the door. But wherever they went, the party was a superb spectacle for the village children. They tailed them in every village, and were even given rides on the jeep to the outskirts of the village when it departed for the next one.
Men of the kurmi caste in particular were very worried about the fact that women would inherit property under Nehru’s threatened Hindu Code Bill. These careful agriculturalists did not want their lands to be divided into smaller, entirely uneconomic, holdings. Mahesh Kapoor admitted that he was in favour of the bill, but explained, as well as he could, why he thought it necessary.
Many of the Muslims were worried about the status of their local
schools, their language, their religious freedom; they asked about the recent troubles in Brahmpur and, further afield, in Ayodhya. Waris reassured them that in Mahesh Kapoor they had a friend who could both read and write Urdu, who was a personal friend of the Nawab Sahib, and whose son—and here he pointed to Maan with great affection and pride—had actually saved the life of the younger Nawabzada in a religious riot at Moharram.
Some tenant farmers asked about the abolition of zamindari, but very tentatively, since Waris, the Nawab Sahib’s man, was present. This caused a great deal of awkwardness all around, but Mahesh Kapoor grasped the nettle and explained people’s rights under the new act. ‘But this should not be seen as an excuse not to pay rent now,’ he said. ‘Four separate cases—from Uttar Pradesh, Purva Pradesh, Madhya Bharat and Bihar—are at present before the Supreme Court, and it will decide quite soon whether the new zamindari laws are valid and can be put into effect. Meanwhile, no one is to be evicted forcibly from his land. And there are strict penalties for tampering with land records in order to benefit anyone—landlord or tenant. The Congress government has plans to move the village patwaris around every three years, so that they cannot form deep and profitable roots in one place. Every patwari must know that he will be most severely punished if he allows himself to be bribed into wrongdoing.’
To the totally landless labourers, most of whom were so cowed that they hardly dared to be present, let alone speak, Mahesh Kapoor promised the distribution of surplus unused land where it was possible. But to these most unfortunate people he knew that he could be of little direct assistance—for his Zamindari Abolition Act did not even touch them.
In some places the people were so poor and underfed and ill that they looked like savages in rags. Their huts were in disrepair, their livestock half-dead. In others they were better off and could even afford to hire a schoolteacher and construct a room or two for a small private school.