The Great Indian Novel (30 page)

Ekalavya stands his ground, but swallows, his dark face burning darker in his dismay. ‘I . . I’m sorry, sir, but I cannot destroy my life and my mother’s to pay your fee,’ he says faintly but firmly.

‘Get out!’ Drona barks. ‘Get out, worthless brat! And if I catch you anywhere near my classes again, I shall exact my fee myself!’

The boy steps back, looks wildly around him, and trips hastily out of the room. Drona’s uproarious laughter follows him mockingly down the stairs.

Later, when the class resumes, Yudhishtir raises his hand. ‘If the boy had readily agreed to the fee you asked of him, guruji, would you have taken it?’

Drona laughs shortly, waving the question away. ‘Study,’ he says, ‘study your epics, young man.’

Next time, Arjun stands first in the examinations - alone.

I see you are troubled, Ganapathi. I have been inflicting too many moral dilemmas on you of late, haven’t I? But there is no point turning your nose into a question-mark, Ganapathi; I am not going to resolve all your problems for you. Was Drona playing an elaborate game that none of the others was sophisticated enough to understand, or was he just doing to poor Ekalavya what Heaslop had done to him? Had the poor boy been less of a literalist and gladly stuck out his thumb as a gesture of devotion and subservience, would Drona have hacked it off with a knife or laughingly invited the lad to join his class? I do not know, Ganapathi, and the ashes of the only man who does have long since flowed down the Ganges into the sea.

But enough of such speculation; we have left too many of our dramatis personae inconveniently frozen in various parts of our tableau. There is Karna, for instance, declaiming to his party elders; let us approach him and hear what he is saying.

‘Gentlemen, the facts are plain. We entered these elections - the first under the new Government of India Act - as the self-proclaimed spokesmen of India’s Muslims. We contested in reserved constituencies, putting up Muslim candidates for seats only Muslims could vote for. And yet, at the end of the day, when the votes were counted, we discovered that Kaurava Muslims - followers of the underclad Mahaguru - have won more Muslim seats than we have. It is galling, but it is reality, and we must accept it.

‘The question obviously arises, what next? There are those amongst us who feel that all we can do is to sulk in our tents. I am not able to prescribe such a bitter pill myself. We contested the elections in search of power, and power is what we must continue to seek if we are to justify our existence as a party. There are many routes to power; in my view we must first attempt the most obvious one. We must ask to join the Kauravas in a coalition government - at least in the one province where we have done well enough to stake a claim to doing so.’

The Muslim grandees around him nod, some vigorously, some with evident scepticism. Let the lights dim on their bobbing hennaed heads, Ganapathi, and let us turn the spot, and our attention, to our Kaurava friends who, too, have emerged from our tableau and are conversing animatedly.

‘But why should we?’ The voice is Dhritarashtra’s. ‘We have an absolute majority in the Northern Province ourselves - we don’t need a coalition with anybody, let alone Karna’s puffed-up little group of bigoted nobodies.’

‘Tactically,’ says a quiet voice, ‘and forgive me for speaking, gentlemen, since I do not, indeed, cannot belong to your party’ - it is, of course, Vidur the civil servant - ‘it would be a wise step. The British would be taken aback by a coalition of the two strongest opposing political forces in the country.’ And then he spoils his argument with bureaucratic propriety by adding: ‘But you, of course, have a political choice to make.’

‘Precisely,’ says the mellifluous Mohammed Rafi, a Northern Province Kaurava - and a Muslim whose aristocratic pedigree is as impeccable as his exquisitely tailored sherwani. ‘We have a political choice to make, and with all respect to
Vidur-bhai,
he cannot be expected to see things the same way. If we enter into a coalition with the Muslim Group, what are Kaurava Muslims like myself going to say to our supporters when they ask us to explain our supping with the Shaitaan we have just been denouncing? We have declared that the Kaurava Party is the only true national party, that we represent all groups and interests, including naturally those of Muslims. Having been elected on the strength of those beliefs, how can you ask us to cede ministerial portfolios that Kaurava Muslims might have expected, to the very people who allege we do not represent Muslims? If the Kaurava Party dispenses with
our
claims so lightly for mere tactical considerations, it will only confirm the Muslim Group argument that we are stooges of the Hindus, with no real power of our own in the party. No, I agree with Dhritarashtra. Let us put principles before tactics, my friends.’

This is probably news to Dhritarashtra, whose argument has not been noticeably long on principle, but he assents vigorously. The discussion continues, and it is clear that Mohammed Rafi has made a telling point. ‘We must not,’ an elder statesman concedes, ‘win the partnership of Karna’s Group and lose the faith of our own Muslim comrades.’

‘Hear, hear,’ murmur some; ‘Well said, V. V.,’ echo others. At last Gangaji ends the debate. ‘There will be no coalition,’ he announces in a voice wearied by conciliation.

The spotlight shifts, for the curtain-ringer.

‘The bastards!’ Karna’s voice itself seems to wear gloves, but there is no mistaking the knuckledusters underneath. ‘Well, gentlemen, that is that, then. I said to you there are other routes to the acquisition of power: we shall now proceed to carve out a few of them. As far as the Kauravas are concerned, gentlemen, it is war.’

War - Pandu’s war - the successor to the ‘war to end all wars’ - erupted in Europe, and as German bombs exploded over Poland, the blast buffeted us in India.

‘Well, what’s the form, then, Sir Richard?’ asked the Viceroy at his daily meeting with his cherubic Principal Private Secretary. ‘Don the glad rags and deliver a proclamation from the steps of the viceregal palace, or does the rule- book prescribe something different?’

‘We don’t have many precedents for a declaration of war, Your Excellency,’ his aide admitted. ‘I could have one of our chaps look it up, but I imagine you can pretty much make up the drill as you go along.’

‘What did we do the last time?’ the Viceroy asked, idly toying with a thirteenth-century miniature Siva lingam that served as a paperweight.

‘The last time? Do you mean the fifth Afghan war, or the seventeenth campaign against the Waziris? I think we went in rather less for protocol than for powder in those engagements. In the British Indian tradition, when you wanted to declare war you tended to do it with a cannon. Unless, of course, you weren’t planning a war at all but a sort of extended picnic, like Sir Francis Younghusband, who went out one morning with five horses and a Christmas hamper and came back having annexed Tibet. It was rather embarrassing at the time, because nobody really
wanted
Tibet, but Sir Francis shrugged and explained that when he rode into Lhasa the local warlords got up and surrendered and he had no choice but to accept their tribute. He’d really intended just to see the tourist spots and to get a few good pictures of the Potala Palace, but one of his rifles went off accidentally and when he then saw all the notables on their knees cowering he couldn’t really disappoint them by
not
conquering them. I think his punishment for taking Tibet was to have to work out what to do with the place. But to return to your question, I’m afraid there was no formal declaration of war there either, Your Excellency.’

‘Sir Richard,’ the Viceroy smiled amiably, his hand straying from the lingam to a jewel-encrusted dagger from Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s collection that was now used to slit open confidential envelopes, rather than throats, ‘I don’t mean any of those wars, of course. The last one in Europe we were mixed up in. The Great War.’

Ah.’ The Principal Private Secretary reflected briefly. ‘I think we heard about that one in India a few weeks after it had started in the old continent. And by then there wasn’t much point in a formal declaration. Of course, the Great War never touched this part of the world very greatly. Except for all the Indian soldiers we sent off to fight in France and Mesopotamia.’

‘This one may, Sir Richard. Touch this part of the world, I mean. The Japanese are in alliance with the Germans and may attack our possessions in the Far East. India is still a long way from their forces, but distances in today’s world mean a good deal less than they did twenty-five years ago. No, this time, when war is declared in India, it could really mean something for this country and her people. India may have to fight to preserve her freedom.’

‘I’m not sure all our Kaurava friends will see it quite like that.’ Sir Richard smiled humourlessly. ‘Mr Datta and his
khadi-clad
companions seem to think that’s what they’re doing already - with us on the wrong side of the argument.’

‘Quite.’ The Viceroy nodded. ‘But I think they’d draw a distinction between the two kinds of fight. The Mahaguru and his friends are “fighting” - if that’s the word for their non-violent agitations - for, in the celebrated phrase, the rights of Englishmen. It’s democracy they want. I hardly think they’ll consider the Nazis a model of
swaraj,
except for the fringe in the Onward Organization, and we can lock that bunch up soon enough. Don’t forget that Ganga Datta was on our side the last time round, quite actively in fact - the Ambulance Association in Hastinapur, was it not?’

‘I haven’t forgotten, Your Excellency.’ Sir Richard, who tended to think of Hastinapur as a personal heirloom, harrumphed. ‘But a lot of water, and some blood, has flowed under the bridge since those days. I’ve made something of a special study of Mr Ganga Datta over the years, and I’m not convinced for a minute by his pontifical pacifism. Today the sainted Mahaguru is just as opposed to British interests as his fellow vegetarian in Berlin.’

The Viceroy put down the dagger and gave his seniormost advisor a sharp look. ‘I do believe your prejudices are showing, Sir Richard,’ he said mildly. India’s non-violent saint-statesman lending moral support to Germany’s jackbooted stormtroopers? No, I think Ganga Datta and most of the Kauravas, certainly Dhritarashtra and his socialist followers, will be happy enough to go along with a declaration of war on Nazi Germany. They’ve been quite critical of the Nazis in their public pronouncements on international affairs. The point is, how do we go about it? It’s easy enough to declare war, but do we, ah, consult them first, and in what manner? There were no elected Indian ministries to think about at the time of the last war. Now there are.’

‘I don’t see how it’s any of their business,’ Sir Richard, defeated, scowled.

‘Come, come, Sir Richard. We propose to declare war on behalf of India and we don’t think it’s the business of the Indian leaders we have?’

‘Precisely, sir.’ Sir Richard’s eyes glowed redly above his pink cheeks. ‘You, the Viceroy of India, will be declaring war on behalf of His Majesty the King- Emperor, whose representative you are in this country, upon those who are his enemies.
India
only comes into the picture at all because it is one of the King-Emperor’s possessions. It has no independent quarrel with Herr Hitler and his friends. I know you don’t agree with my view that Ganga Datta and his ilk would support Attila the Hun if it would help drive the Raj out of Delhi, but leaving the political reliability of the Indians aside, the point is that the only reason for India to be at war with Germany is that she is ruled by Britain.
Britain
is at war with Germany.
British
India
must follow suit. The Indians governing their provinces - under the supervision, in any case, of British Governors appointed by the Crown - have nothing to do with it at all. Defence isn’t even their business; it’s ours.’ He raised an eyebrow at his sovereign’s representative.
‘Quod
erat
demonstrandum,
Your Excellency.’

‘Nec
scire
fas
est
omnia,’
the Viceroy riposted. ‘None the less why not consult them anyway? It should buck up that po-faced lot the Kauravas have in office.’