The Setting Sun (32 page)

I raise the question of the differences between life in British territory and the princely states. It seems paradoxical for revolutionaries to have sheltered amongst feudal regimes.

‘You see, in Aundh the rulers were enlightened. In fact before the war they’d already decided to devolve power. It was known as the Aundh Experiment, and Gandhi endorsed it. The British never did anything like that, not until they had to. But in other places, the feudal rulers wanted to hang onto their privileges. The Nizam of Hyderabad, for instance. After
we sent the British away we had to deal with him. That was a bitter struggle.’ His gimlet eyes have a steely glitter. ‘There was much more bloodshed than in Satara. But it was worth it,’ he adds with satisfaction.

I know the Nizam ruled what was once an almost entirely Muslim principality in the middle of British India. According to Orientalist legend, he was fabulously wealthy, loved hunting and boasted an enormous harem. He elected for complete independence in 1947, which the British agreed to on the same constitutional-legal basis that allowed the Hindu Rajah of Kashmir to join India rather than Pakistan, despite its overwhelmingly Muslim population. Unwilling to sanction an independent polity in their heartland, however, the new Congress government gave the Nizam an ultimatum to join India. When it was rejected,
anschluss
followed. There was clearly one rule for the Rajah and another for the Nizam. The latter bravely – or foolishly – set his ill-equipped army to defend Hyderabad, only for it to be annihilated by Indian units battle-hardened during World War Two. Two to three hundred thousand Muslim civilians died as the Indian army and its hangers-on ran riot, including, I now understand, former members of the Parallel Government.

‘There were more schools, more hospitals on average in British territory than in many princely states,’ Lad goes on meditatively, ‘but what’s the use of such things if you are slaves?’

‘Weren’t the British already democratising in the 1930s? Didn’t you have an Indian prime minister in Bombay Province?’

‘My friend, haven’t you heard about the Defence of India Rules introduced when war broke out?’

I’m suitably chastened.

When it’s time to leave, Lad gestures to one of his assistants. The man comes forward with a book. It has a loud red cover of a man staring at the rising sun, chains on his wrists bursting asunder.

‘My autobiography,’ Lad murmurs gravely. ‘Here you will find the full and true story of the movement.’ He signs it in a shaky hand.

My earlier suspicions are confirmed. Like Charunder Shinde’s yesterday, the dedication reads: ‘To dear Professor Bart’. But despite his gift, the time he’s given me and his story about Bill, I’m glad to escape. I’ve felt on edge, withered by his glare, from the moment he entered the room. Lad radiates disapproval. Is it because he
does
know who I am, or continuing bitterness about the Raj?

From Kundal to Walwa, where we’re meeting the second surviving nationalist leader, is half an hour across more monotonous countryside, the road bisecting endless sugarcane plantations. I flick through Lad’s book, the text of which is enlivened by several cartoons of the Parallel Government at work – attacking a police post, training recruits in the fields, doing social work. One shows someone being given the bastinado, hands tied behind his back, bare soles tied by a rope and raised to be thrashed.

‘Justice for an oppressive moneylender,’ Briha translates the surrounding Marathi script.

Is this what Bill had in mind at Chafal, when he said it was time such people were given a taste of their own medicine? But why, after two centuries of rule, hadn’t the British stamped out rural usury, which kept the peasants so impoverished? I wonder, too, about the justice of Lad’s claim that Bill was a terrorist. He didn’t fire on the wedding crowd, thank God. And Chafal was nothing compared to what Colonel Jacob got up to in Kolhapur. However, what’s uncomfortably similar is the principle: using ‘shock and awe’, staging public performances of summary ‘justice’ on victims selected on fairly arbitrary gounds, in order to cow civilians into obedience to an authoritarian foreign power. Perhaps that’s one definition of ‘state terrorism’?

When we pull up outside the community hall in Walwa, a burly man of medium height is waiting on the veranda with a broad smile. He’s wearing a loose beige kurta which doesn’t fully conceal chunky, varicosed calves and feet in brown socks. His thin, silvery hair is cut into an almost military short back and sides, set off by a neat Clark Gable moustache. Though he moves slowly, the former guerrilla’s handshake remains strong. Perhaps he spent time as a young man in wrestling
talims
like the one I saw yesterday. In contrast to the grim-mannered Lad, he can’t stop chuckling as he leads us inside the hall and motions us to sofas facing a glass-topped table. He insists we eat something and have tea first. I’m instantly at ease. Our host is one of those people who, the very first time you meet them, you feel you’ve known forever.

On the surrounding walls are several portraits, including Gandhi, Shivaji, Nana Patil and Lad addressing a mass rally. There are a couple of photos of Nayakwadi as a younger man. One of them arrests me. It must have been taken in his twenties and has an uncanny resemblance to Bill at that age. I examine my host carefully. Is this how my father would have looked if he’d lived as long? He was taller, but they have the same burly build and mischievous expression. A strong pang of loss catches me unawares and I warm to Nayakwadi even more. Briha, too, seems more relaxed than at Lad’s. He addresses our host as ‘Anna’. I assume it’s an honorific, judging by my friend’s awestruck demeanour. I follow suit, cracking our host into another grin. He takes my hand and squeezes it in his bearlike paw, keeping hold until an assistant serves tea and chapattis, together with a dish of the same spinach fried with garlic which Kiron Modak prepared.

I repeat many of the questions I asked Lad. Once more, I’m not sure Nayakwadi knows who I am. He doesn’t speak English and presumably he doesn’t read it either, since he barely glanced at my visiting card. I heard ‘University of London’ in Briha’s introduction, but although listening out
for it this time, no name at all. I decide to say nothing again. I want my host to be frank, not shelter behind the ritualised courtesies typical of most Indians I’ve met on my journey. Through Briha, he tells me he was born in Walwa in July 1922 and that his father was a poor farmer. His mother supported Congress, though her husband was less keen.

‘He said Congress was for the elites,’ Nayakwadi adds. ‘I never belonged myself. I was more a communist. The people who joined Congress later,’ he shakes his head sadly, ‘betrayed our ideals. But in those days, you made alliances with anyone who opposed the Raj. I approved of S.C. Bhose’s links with the Japanese and the formation of the Indian National Army. Anything to be free.’

‘But once the Soviets entered the war, weren’t communists obliged to support the struggle against fascism?’

‘Mine was more a local, Indian form of communism, not the official CP kind. I simply wanted all our resources to be shared. And improve the condition of women, end the slavery of caste. You see this young man who brought your food?’

His assistant hovers.

‘I knew his grandfather. He wasn’t allowed water from the same well as me. Can you imagine, a neighbour you live beside all your life, but we couldn’t drink or eat with him?’ He squeezes my hand again. ‘That is one thing you British did. By making everyone equal before the law, theoretically at least, you dealt a heavy blow to caste. But these things were by-products, not the goal of your rule.’

I glance at Briha, whose head’s in danger of spinning off, so vigorously does he nod approval.

‘Did you ever meet any British people when you were growing up?’

He shakes his head. ‘But once in the movement I did.’

‘Yates, Hobson and Gilbert?’

Nayakwadi breaks into another chuckle. ‘All three, yes.

Gilbert I came into closest contact with. Twice he nearly caught me. I must say he was persistent. He caused us problems.’

It’s partly gratifying to hear this. ‘How did you meet?’

‘The first time I was in Kameri, for a meeting with Bhauri Patel, my lieutenant. Someone must have betrayed us, for suddenly there were police outside. Patel’s wife led me immediately into the women’s quarters, where I put on a sari. I was much slimmer then,’ he guffaws. ‘The police ordered everyone into the yard while they searched the house. They had to be very careful about touching women, so I stayed in the middle of the group and pulled the edge of the sari across my face and prayed no one would notice. No one did,’ he concludes with a rumbling laugh.

This man is fun. ‘And the other time?’

‘I was at another friend’s in Eitwade. It was after dark. Again, Gilbert suddenly arrived. Nobody heard him coming.’

Is this the incident recorded in Modak’s
No Place
, when ‘Bill’ walked for two miles in his stockings?

‘I couldn’t play the same trick again, there weren’t any women around. Instead I ran into the courtyard at the back. There was a very high wall, no possibility of escape. Only the well and a banyan tree. I knew I’d be caught if I climbed into its branches, so I jumped over the side of the well. Just in time, because suddenly I heard a great grunt and someone landing in the courtyard from the other side. Gilbert had come round the back and somehow got over the wall.’

‘Didn’t he hear the splash?’

Tears of laughter squeeze out of Nayakwadi’s eyes. ‘I’d climbed down the roots. It was a very old tree and they’d broken through the side of the well. I worked my way well inside them and held my breath. I could see a torch playing over the branches and then this shadow reached over the well. The light shone on the water. I was close enough to Gilbert to hear him breathing. Then he cursed and the light disappeared. I stayed down there, hanging in the roots, while the house
was searched. I heard a constable saying, “He can’t just have disappeared, the sahib was covering the back.” ’

Nayakwadi calls for more tea. ‘Ah, I enjoyed my duels with Gilbert,’ he sighs.

I’m touched by his tone. Respect, even affection, for Bill from one of his most redoubtable opponents.

‘What do you think of the Raj now?’ I ask.

‘All in the past. I feel no bitterness.’

‘And India today?’

For the first time, Nayakwadi’s expression clouds. ‘India today?’ He shakes his head, before decrying the chronic corruption, incompetence and self-serving of the political elites.

‘The ordinary man suffers badly, in terms of education, health and justice. Here in Walwa is better, because we established a sugar co-operative to give the farmers a fair price. The profits go to improving everyone’s lives, not just the few. This community centre’ – he gestures round the room – ‘was paid for by us. And the school. Dalits, Muslims, Christians, all are welcome. But many in the surrounding villages still have no electricity, despite the dams their taxes pay for. And there are so many landless still. These are the real battles facing India.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not this stupid warmongering with Pakistan.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘All engineered by the capitalist classes. If there was no poverty, people wouldn’t care which country they lived in, what gods others believed in.’

I wish Nayakwadi had been at the lecture yesterday. He radiates such moral authority. And so much humour and warmth. I could get very attached to him.

‘How do you see the struggle of the Parallel Government now?’

‘We need another one,’ he answers straight away, with a mischievous grin.

I feel obliged to ask him, too, about the accusations of atrocities against his movement.

‘Well, mistakes were made,’ Nayakwadi acknowledges. ‘Some people were wrongly accused, unjustly persecuted. But it was a war, and sometimes decisions had to be made very hurriedly. It doesn’t detract from the good that was done. Especially if you can admit your mistakes afterwards and say sorry.’

I’m deeply moved by the meeting. I feel I’ve heard wisdom, distilled by decades of experience, of learning, of action and of self-interrogation. Nayakwadi strikes me as a man of luminous integrity, with the kind of values I most admire. What a shame he and Bill were on opposite sides. Even more so that Bill couldn’t make this journey with me. Still, Nayakwadi’s half-admiring, almost affectionate account of his opponent is something solid to counter-balance the trip to Chafal. Especially as there’ve been no allegations of the kind Shinde and Lad made.

When we get back in the car, I thank Briha for his patient interpreting. ‘By the way, we kept calling him “Anna”. What does it mean?’

‘Father,’ he responds. ‘But less formal.’

Daddy, daddy, daddy, I mutter under my breath.