The Solitude of Emperors (27 page)

‘My friend,’ Rajan said quietly, ‘your emotions are understandable, but you do not appear to know your own history and the way this country works. From time immemorial, whether it was Ashoka or Raja Raja Chola or Akbar, whoever has shown strength and determination has brought this country to greatness. None of these mighty rulers came to power by peaceful negotiations alone, regretfully blood was spilt, but once their enemies were subdued, all Indians, regardless of their caste or religion, prospered. Imagine the heights to which this country could rise if for the first time the majority were to be empowered—not just a Hindu kingdom here or a Hindu kingdom there, but every Hindu everywhere one hundred per cent behind their leaders—the world would never have seen anything like it. But to bring us all together we need to win a few battles in the name of Hinduism. The breaking of the masjid was one, and there will have to be others because they serve to invigorate and encourage our co-religionists.’

Had Rajan just co-opted Ashoka and Akbar to his malign cause? I thought in disbelief. ‘Sir, are you trying to rewrite history? I know that’s what people like you do, but Ashoka and Akbar were the least communal of India’s rulers—’

‘I am not saying these great figures were communal, Vijay bhai, I am saying they brought Indian civilization to heights never dreamt of before, and that is what we are also trying to do. We are fighting a battle to win the heart and soul of Hindustan, a battle to make the Hindu era the greatest in the history of India. And the minorities will have nothing to fear once we have achieved our goals, Vijay bhai. After all we were all Hindus once. They will be treated well. It is the duty of the elder brother to take care of his younger brothers and sisters.’

Although his voice was no louder than it had been and his face exhibited no signs of great emotion, there was no mistaking the electric energy he exuded. Had I been susceptible to his point of view or even a doubter I would have been swept away by his charisma, no question about that, but what I felt beneath my anger was fear for the first time as I began to get a true sense of the man and his mission. Nothing but an all-out effort could stop him.

‘Forgive me for not fully understanding, sir,’ I said as calmly as I could, ‘but is your agitation to take over the Shrine of the Blessed Martyr part of this war you are talking about? So far as I can tell Brother Ahimas and the devotees at the shrine haven’t done the Hindu community any harm, people of all faiths worship there—’

‘They destroyed a temple of Lord Shiva that stood on that spot,’ Mansukhani said suddenly. I had been concentrating so intently on Rajan that I hadn’t noticed the other man’s presence.

‘You don’t have any proof… and—’

I couldn’t finish because Mansukhani interrupted again. ‘Proof-shoof not necessary,’ he said. ‘The place is holy to Shiv-bhakts, and we know Ahimas is using foreign funds from Rome, from London, from all Christian countries to convert Hindus. He has a lot of money—’

‘I have seen no evidence of this,’ I said.

‘They are very clever these Christians,’ Mansukhani said. ‘Not as violent as the Muslims, but they lie, they cheat and they will trick you, given the least opportunity.’

I ignored Mansukhani and tried to turn my attention back to Rajan, but the fat shopkeeper wasn’t about to shut up. ‘If I was him I wouldn’t be so peaceful in my attempt to take over the Tower of God, not after what these Christians did to him. Do you know that when he had no money and had his mother and his brother and all his sisters to support, the bank manager of the Cooperative Bank in Meham, a low-caste Christian cur, had him dismissed from his job, just so he could give it to one of his Christian relatives?’

Rajan’s composure cracked and he snapped at the big man, castigating him for interrupting. As Mansukhani cowered under the onslaught, all his bluster gone, my fear deepened, for if there was a personal element to Rajan’s attack on the shrine, there was no point in hoping that he would ever give up. His tongue-lashing of the hapless Mansukhani was brief. He ordered him to inform the people he was scheduled to meet next that he would be half an hour late, and he told him that he wanted to speak to me alone. He then turned to me, his mask back in place.

‘I have nothing against Brother Ahimas or Christians personally,’ he said in his calm, unexcitable tone. ‘All we intend to do on Republic Day is to stage a peaceful dharna outside the shrine, demanding that it be restored to us.’

‘You mean Feast Day, don’t you?’ I cut in.

If I was hoping to surprise him into admitting his real intentions I was to be disappointed. Rajan simply ignored the interruption and carried on.

‘We do not want violence, and if our Christian brothers and sisters comply with our demands, there will be no problem. We will respect their sentiments; we can look into rebuilding the shrine elsewhere, moving their miraculous cross. Anything is possible…’

‘And if they don’t give in to your peaceful demands, presumably you will force your way into the shrine. Didn’t you just imply that you don’t see any harm in blood being spilled in the great war being fought in the name of Hinduism?’

‘I would never harm anyone myself.’

‘What if the devotees resist?’

‘We will worry about that when it happens,’ he said smoothly.

‘You will never succeed in taking over the shrine,’ I said a little shrilly. ‘The people of Meham will not allow it.’

‘Vijay bhai,’ he said imperturbably, ‘you talk blithely of the people of Meham but have you talked to any of them? In the bazaar, on the estates, in the shops? That’s the problem with you English-speaking pseudo-secularists, you are totally out of touch with everything. You know, one of the few things I remember from my childhood was a field trip that we once took with a teacher. We were studying zoology, and he took us to an uncultivated area a few miles from school that was dotted with acacia trees. He wandered around for a while then stopped at a particular tree and told us to look up. When we did, we thought the tree had started bearing jewelled fruit. And then one of the gems spread its wings and flew a short distance to another branch, and we realized they were beetles so beautiful that if they had been strung into a necklace it could only have been presented to a maharani. That night I told a few of my friends that we were going to get ourselves some of the beetles, so at the weekend a gang of us walked to the acacia forest and plundered a crop. We put them in old Bournvita bottles with holes punched in the tops to enable the insects to breathe, and we put a few branches from the trees into the jars as food. For two days we were as rich as princes, but then the beetles began to die. Taken out of their natural habitat, they died slow agonizing deaths, leaving only their glittering green and gold wings behind. You people are like those golden beetles, Vijay bhai; you might glitter and preen for a while, but this is not your natural habitat, and soon you will all die out. That is why it doesn’t matter what you write or say or think because you are not truly Indian—just like those beetles that died you are living on borrowed time.’

‘If we’re living on borrowed time, then so are you,’ I said grimly. ‘You are not the first to try to impose your vision of fundamentalism on the people, and you won’t be the last. The people will spurn you when they realize you have nothing substantial to offer except hate and lies. As I recall you talked about Ashoka and Akbar, but perhaps you don’t realize why people still revere them today, or perhaps you do know, but would rather not face up to the facts, Mr Rajan. I have just been reading about them, and the truth is that people still love them for their all-encompassing vision for this country and its people. If you don’t have that, you might be successful in the short term but it will never last.’

‘You have us all wrong, Vijay bhai; we are not interested in short-term gains. We don’t care if people reject us today, we’re prepared to fight for a thousand years, two thousand, until we win this battle. Unlike you, we are of this soil, we are the majority and our brothers and sisters will eventually see the light. We can be patient, we have the numbers and resources on our side. Think about it; if you don’t believe me, that’s OK, talk to the common people and see what they think.’

Mansukhani returned, and this time Rajan got up to go. He apologized for not being able to spend any more time with me, shook hands and walked out. I followed, hearing that calm, unflustered voice in my head and the poison it dripped. I was sick with discouragement, afraid that Rajan was right. So what if he was stopped this time? I thought, as I made my way to the taxi rank. As he had proclaimed, the fundamentalists had the time, the people and the wherewithal eventually to win the war. But even as I thought that I remembered Mr Sorabjee’s determination to keep fighting as the darkness descended on Bombay—no, the struggle must go on.

Just before I got into a taxi, I paused to take a look at the scene around me. A bus had just pulled in and was disgorging its passengers—office workers, shopkeepers, farmers—who merged with the groups of people clogging the streets of the town. There were too many people here, I thought, too many people who had nothing to do, who could explode into violence at a moment’s notice. A small altercation broke out between some of the passengers at the bus stop—two men were arguing fiercely about something—and as I watched them my mind went back to something I had witnessed in Bombay. The packed local train I was in was slowing to a stop at a suburban station when a middle-aged man, a clerk by the look of him, balding with his remaining hair neatly oiled and combed over his shiny scalp, accused a burly man who was standing next to him of picking his pocket. The big man, who could have silenced his accuser with a stare, chose instead to try to make a run for it. In an instant the crowd was upon him, attacking him with a venom that I still remember. Twenty or thirty men, all of them dwarfed by their victim, went at him with a fury born of long years of being overlooked, ignored, bullied and frustrated in their tiny, tiny lives. They slapped the cowering giant with their open palms, they beat him with their chappals and their worn, shiny briefcases, pulled at his hair, kicked him as he crouched down, burying his face in his hands, and all I could think of as the train pulled away was that if he had only opened his mouth and roared at them, they would have scattered and run. But perhaps he was simply bewildered by the unexpected savagery of the attack. Rajan had talked about the revenge of the dispossessed and I did not disbelieve him—their fury lay just beneath the surface, and if it was properly channelled, as professional agitators were capable of doing, it could become a truly destructive force.

~

When I got back to Cypress Manor, I telephoned the Brigadier, as he had told me to, and gave him a detailed account of my meeting. He promised to make his own enquiries and invited me to tea the next evening. I then called Professor Menon. I caught him just in time as he was leaving for the shrine. He intended to spend the next few days there along with six young men who had volunteered to defend the shrine if it came under attack (Brother Ahimas had been told that they would be helping with the Feast Day preparations). He said he had tried to telephone the Collector but had failed to reach him. He had also missed the inspector of the Meham police station, who had been out on a case.

I volunteered my services to try and meet the officials and also asked if I could be included among the shrine’s defenders, but Menon thought I would be more useful if I kept to my role as a reporter. There was a slim hope, he said, that Rajan wouldn’t resort to any extreme action in the presence of a Bombay journalist as I might file a negative report about him. We left it at that, and I said I’d see him on the fifth.

12

The Solitude of Emperors

The entrance to the Brigadier’s property was only half a kilometre away from Cypress Manor so I decided to walk to my appointment. The journey was uphill all the way, but it was cool, and it wasn’t strenuous walking on the well-metalled road cut into the hillside. Every so often I would pass a gate opening on to a driveway, but the houses here stood in such large forested grounds that there was not a building to be seen from the road, let alone another human being. It was said that the higher a person lived on Tiger Hill, the more important he was, and certainly if anyone doubted that the Brigadier was the overlord of Meham, the site of his residence would have ended their argument, for the road stopped at a tall iron gate at the summit. A uniformed guard at the gatehouse would not let me pass, he was obviously unused to visitors arriving on foot, but after he had telephoned through to the house, he allowed me in reluctantly. For half a kilometre, I walked through forest, soaring eucalyptus and jacaranda trees and a mix of conifers and other species. There was birdsong, and once a small greyish-brown animal that stood about a foot high scurried into the undergrowth. The road crested a small rise, and abruptly the forest gave way to a smooth lawn that unrolled all the way down to the enormous bungalow that stood at the centre of the property. Brightly coloured flower beds encircled the house like a necklace, its clasp provided by two enormous monkey puzzle trees that grew in front of the building. Everywhere I looked vivid splashes of colour and imposing trees punctuated the green swell of the lawns. An army of gardeners, tiny figures in that immensity of space, toiled diligently in the strong afternoon light, nipping, pruning, weeding, heightening the perfection of the garden. It was easy to see why the Brigadier had won so many prizes at the Flower Show.

As I neared the house, I saw an ancient Fiat parked by a hedge and wondered who the visitor might be. A uniformed bearer showed me into a small study, asked if I would like some tea, then left unobtrusively. I was glad of the opportunity to collect my thoughts because I had spent most of the night in fruitless pursuit of a workable plan to stop Rajan. The more I reviewed my encounter with him, the more worried I became; the calm uninflected way in which he had talked about leading the demonstration, the fervent dedication to his cause… who could stand up to that combination? I wasn’t convinced the Brigadier would be able to deal with Rajan, but of all the available options, he certainly seemed to be the best. He knew everybody of consequence in the district, and if he could persuade enough powerful people to rally round, then Rajan might be forced to abandon his plans or at least postpone them until we were better prepared.