Authors: Paul Scott
I have thought hard about the true “dangerous area” and must admit, somewhat reluctantly, that I can’t grasp the issues firmly enough to come up with anything remotely resembling a premise from which you could work. I find myself too readily backtracking into the old condition of statement and refutation and counterstatement. For instance, taking Reid’s jejune account of the 1935 scheme for Federation—and his comment, “It led only to a scramble for power,” which leaves the unknowledgeable reader with the impression that we had made a handsome offer and then had to sit back and watch in dismay while the Indians proved themselves too immature either to understand the issues
or to grasp their opportunity—all I can really turn my mind to are the alternative readings that show why, as
statesmen,
the Indians rejected Federation, and how the whole federal scheme and proposal could be seen in the light of our having offered the Indians a constitution that would only have prolonged, perhaps even perpetuated, our power and influence, if only as Imperial Arbitrators.
Similarly—again taking Reid’s comments as a kind of basic “norm”—one could write at length demolishing his casual inference that the Cripps Mission of 1942 failed because of Indian intransigence, or counterstate equally casually and briefly and inaccurately—that this was a typical Churchillian move, made to dress the window and make friends and influence people abroad after the defeat in Asia, but which amounted in itself to no more than a grudging repetition of old promises and even older reservations.
And that’s not what we’re after, is it? Even though one is so tempted to cut away at the foundations of Brigadier Reid’s apparently unshakable foursquare little edifice of simple cause and simple effect in order to redress the balance and present the obverse, and just as inaccurate, picture of a tyrannical and imperialistic power grinding the faces of its coloured subjects in the dust.
In fact we are not at all after the blow by blow account of the politics that led to the action. Actually any one man would be incapable of giving such an account—if he confined himself to the blows. There were so many blows he would spend more than his lifetime recording them. To make the preparation of any account a reasonable task he would have to adopt an attitude towards the available material. The action of such an attitude is rather like that of a sieve. Only what is relevant to the attitude gets through. The rest gets thrown away. The real relevance and truth of what gets through the mesh then depends on the relevance and truth of the attitude, doesn’t it? If one agrees with that one is at once back on the ground of personal preference—even prejudice—which may or may not have anything to do with “truth,” so called.
Anyway, let me imagine (as you helpfully suggested in your note) that I am about to embark on a history of the British-Indian relationship. I would have to adopt an attitude to the mass of material confronting me. What would it be?
I think it would be as simple—childlike almost—as this: I would take as my premise that the Indians wanted to be free, and that we also wished this, but that they had wanted to be free for just that much
longer than we had felt or agreed that they should be; that given this situation the conflict arose partly as a result of the lack of synchronization of the timing of the two wishes, but also because this, in time, developed into a lack of synchronization of the wishes themselves. Being human, the longer the Indians were denied freedom the more they wanted to be free on their own terms, and the more they wanted to be free on their own terms the more we—also being human—insisted that they must initially acquire freedom on ours. The longer this conflict continued, the more abstruse the terms of likely agreement became on either side. It was then a question of the greater morality outlasting and outweighing the lesser. Which was why, of course, in the end the Indians won.
Having put it in those simple words (and they form a mesh you could sift an enormous lot of detailed evidence through), I am reminded of what you said during our interview about “the moral drift of history,” and see how perhaps the impetus behind that drift stems in the main from our consciences, and that the dangerous area is the
natural
place for our consciences to work in, with or without us, usually without. The trouble is that the word dangerous always suggests something slightly sinister, as though there were an unbreakable connection at source between “danger” and “wrong.” “Danger” does have this connotation, but I suppose it doesn’t if we remember we only use the word to convey our fear of the personal consequences, the danger we’d be in ourselves if we followed our consciences all the time.
I remember that during our talk you referred to the “beat” and the “pause” and I think described these as the unrecorded moments of history. I wish I could relate this theory to a particular event in my life and see how I came out on the right side rather than the wrong, or that I could relate it to an event in Reid’s. But even in attempting to relate it, I’m back again in the world of describable events. And when I attempt to relate the theory to all the events in the lives of all the people who were connected with the action—however directly or remotely—my mind simply won’t take in the complex of emotions and ambitions and reactions that led, say, to any one of the single actions that was part of the general describable pattern. Perhaps though, the mind can respond to a sense of a cumulative, impersonal justice? The kind of justice whose importance lies not only in the course apparently and overwhelmingly taken, but in its exposure of the dangers that still lie ahead, threatening to divert the drift once more?
THREE
(
Appendix to “Civil and Military”
)
A Deposition
by
S. V. Vidyasagar
In my sixteenth year I was plucked in the matriculation and left the Mayapore Government Higher School with the reproaches of my parents and no prospects to a career. For nearly twelve months I was living a life of shame and wickedness, going with loose women and impairing my health. So bad did I become that my father turned me out of the house. My mother secretly gave me rupees one hundred which she had saved from the household expenses over many months. I regret that even this token of affection and motherly trust I squandered on drink and fornication. For many weeks I was at death’s door in my squalid surroundings but upon recovery I was still only taking notice of girls and liquor. Many times I was praying for guidance and self-discipline, but only I had to see a pretty girl and at once I was following her and making immoral suggestions in front of everybody, so that my reputation was badly compromised and no decent person would come close to me, unless they were boys of my own kind whose parents were having nothing to do with them or not knowing that they were acting in this way until their neighbours or friends pointed it out.
In this manner I became seventeen and now, revolted by my way of life and resolving upon both moral and physical improvement, I went back to my father’s house and begged forgiveness. My mother and sister wept at my return but my father was stern with me and called me to account for my past wickedness. I said that I could account for it only as a madness and that now I was trusting to recovery by God’s grace and by my own determination. Seeing me so sorrowful and humble of mien my
father opened his arms to me once more. Beginning thus a new and upright life I took employment as a clerk with my father’s assistance and recommendation and paid the whole of my monthly emolument to my mother, taking from her only a few annas for daily expenditure. At this time also I was bitterly regretting the irresponsibility and bad behaviour that had led me to well-deserved failure in the Higher School. At night I would read in my room burning the midnight oil until my mother begged me to be taking more care of my health and not running the risk of falling asleep in the office and losing my job.
So, determined not to be giving my parents any more trouble I drew up a chart which I pinned to the wall above my bed, allotting so much of my leisure hours to study, so much to sleep and so much to healthy exercise. On fine evenings I would stroll out to the Chillianwallah Bagh Extension to look at the fine houses of our well-off neighbours and wander by the river bank. There I saw and caught the eyes of many girls but always I drew back before the temptation to speak to them or follow them proved too much to be difficult. I avoided those parts of the town where I might fall in with my erstwhile companions, especially the street in which many prostitutes lived and whose glances from an upper room could be the ruination of any innocent and upright young man chancing to be in the vicinity.
I was now firmly set upon a course of life both bodily healthy and spiritually uplifting and even upon these walks I would take a book with me and sit down by the river bank to study, casting but few looks at the black braids and silken sarees of the girls nearby. In this way, I happened to fall in with Mr. Francis Narayan, who was teacher at the Christian mission school in Chillianwallah bazaar and a well-known figure in Mayapore, always riding his bicycle to and fro and speaking at random. Falling into conversation with him I found myself telling him of my earlier bad life and reformed character and my hopes for the future. Learning that I was working as a humble clerk and sadly regretting my failure in the matriculation he said he would bear me in mind for any suitable post he heard about. But expecting nothing to come of this friendly meeting I continued to apply myself daily to my tasks and program of self-improvement and further education. Now I began to feel somewhat of impatience and to cast covetous glances upon the books in the Mayapore Book Depot in the road near the Tirupati Temple which I passed daily on my journey to and from the office and always entered on my way home in the evenings. My father was head
clerk to a contractor and the office in which I worked was belonging to a friend of my father’s employer, a merchant with two marriageable daughters. One day I stopped as usual at the Mayapore Book Depot to browse among the many volumes. Under the pretext merely of examining, I was reading chapter by chapter a book about 1917 Declaration of Self-Government. I had become interested in political affairs. Dearly I wished to possess this volume but its price was beyond my means although I knew that my mother would give me the requisite money were I but to ask her. As I stood that evening reading the next chapter, I saw that I was unwatched for the moment by the owner and his assistant and without conscious thought I went out with the book under my arm. Elated and yet afraid of being followed and apprehended as a common thief I wandered without due care and found myself in my old district. A voice called out to me and looking in that direction I saw one of my old friends, a young man senior to the rest of us who had talked and mixed with us but not accompanied us on our bouts of drinking and other bad things. His name was Moti Lal. Seeing the book under my arm he took hold of it and looked at the title and said, “So you are becoming grownup at last.” He invited me to have coffee in the shop where he had been sitting and I agreed. He asked me what I had been doing all these many months, so I told him. He also was a clerk, in the warehouse of Romesh Chand Gupta Sen. I asked him whether he had seen any of our other old friends but he said they had also become respectable like me.
On this occasion suddenly I was seeing that my old life was not so disreputable as my conscience was telling me. It was wicked no doubt to drink so much bad liquor and to go with immoral women without due discrimination, but now I saw that we had been doing such things because our energies were in need of special outlet. Fortified by this discovery I walked back to the Mayapore Book Depot, restored the stolen book to its rightful owner and said that I had taken it away in a fit of absentmindedness. After this he allowed me to sit many hours in the back of the shop studying new volumes that had come in from Calcutta and Bombay.
I was in my eighteenth year when Mr. Narayan, the mission teacher, called at my home and said that the editor of the
Mayapore Gazette
was looking for an energetic young man with good English who would act as office boy and apprentice journalist. Mr. Narayan confided in me that it was he who wrote the articles known as
Topics,
by “Stroller,” for the
Gazette,
which he did in order to augment his emoluments as a teacher.
My father was against the idea that I should leave my present employment. He pointed out that in due course, so long as I attended carefully to my duties, I had prospects of becoming head clerk and even of marrying one of my employer’s daughters if I showed application and diligence. In the past few months my father had become in very much poor health. Every day he would walk to his office, never even one minute late, but working frequently far beyond the appointed hour of closing and returning home to face my mother’s complaints that his supper was spoiled. Since adopting a more manly attitude towards my own life I had learned respect for my father where before only there had been criticism. Also I was affectionate towards him because of his no doubt love for me. I did not want to displease him but also I wished to apply for the job Mr. Narayan had already put in my way by speaking to the editor about me. Eventually my father gave his consent for me to apply to the
Gazette.
I feared greatly his death—which took place six months later—and I did not want to displease him in the twilight of his life or think of him leaving this world without a son to officiate at his funeral rites. Therefore I feared my own temper and resulting quarrel and being turned out again. But I thank God who moved him to give in to my wishes. In due course I became an employee of the
Mayapore Gazette.
After my father’s death I became “head of the household” and had to arrange the marriage of my only surviving sister, who was then sixteen. These family obligations took up a great deal of my time in 1937/8. My mother and I were now living alone together. She was also always persuading me to become married. In those days I was somewhat innocent in these respects. I feared that my experience with immoral women would make it dangerous for me to be a husband and father, even though I had not—by God’s will—suffered any lasting disease. Also I was dedicating my life, after my father’s death, to politics and to my work as a “rising” journalist.