by Rishi Reddi
The boy turned his dark eyes toward Jivan, but they were without feeling. Years ago, while commanding a regiment in the North China Plain, Jivan had seen that same emptiness on his cavalrymen’s faces.
“No,” Ram said.
Jivan blinked.
The boy glanced at him. “I was there, bhai-ji,” he said, looking away, but he need not have. Jivan understood the boy’s lie, his silence about his wounds. He understood all of it.
“You are not at fault.” Jivan clasped Ram’s shoulder. “Remember that,” he said. Ram walked off quickly, leaving him alone in the circle of lamplight.
WAR HAD BROKEN OUT in Europe. For a short while, a very short while, Britain was not involved, then she too entered, bringing along her dominions, colonies, and protectorates—a quarter of the world’s population, cultivating a quarter of the world’s land. In early September, Jivan received a letter from San Francisco from a man he had never met but whose name he knew. That Sunday afternoon he went to Fredonia Park, where Malik Khan sat under a ramada, speaking of his village to thirty others lounging on benches and blankets on the ground, enjoying the shade. He was relaying news of a couple who had eloped, only to be captured a day later by men sent from the village panchayat. It was the time of week when the local Anglos left the park to the Hindu farmers. Jivan stepped through the gate and the men stopped talking. The youngest, a fourteen-year-old from Hoshiarpur, stood up.
Jivan Singh addressed them without taking a seat. “Pandit RamChandra Bharadwaj of the Ghadar Party is coming from San Francisco,” he announced. The men listened intently. RamChandra was now the president of the party, and worthy of respect. “He has written to me with a request to hold a meeting. Next Sunday, please come to my home. He will give a talk.”
The men looked at each other. “Bhai-ji, if I may,” Malik Khan spoke up, “we thought your beliefs did not mix with the Ghadars’?”
Jivan paused. He had not realized his views were so well known.
“There is no harm in hearing what a man has to say,” Jivan said. He wanted to believe this was true. The leader of the Ghadar Party had approached him. He could not say no.
“What time shall we come, bhai-ji?” Harnam Singh asked.
“Afternoon, one o’clock is fine. Tell the others,” he said, knowing they would all come.
He did not tell them what else RamChandra had written in the letter—Bhai, I do not know your feelings on all matters, but your help to our countrymen has not been exceeded by another on this Pacific shore—or how proud Jivan was when Ram read to him these words.
PANDIT RAMCHANDRA BHARADWAJ WAS a dignified man, with a thick mustache and oiled hair, disembarking from the first-class section of the Sunday-morning express along with the white businessmen, arriving in the desert heat dressed in a vest with jacket and tie. The man spoke with the accent of the Punjabi officers in the British Indian Army, or the civil servants who worked as engineers and accountants in district offices. Meeting him, Jivan was conscious of his own dungarees, his rough hands, of the shaky wagon in which they rattled home, the dust that covered them by arrival. Jivan addressed him as pandit-ji even though Jivan was his elder. RamChandra asked for a moment to refresh himself. With relief, Jivan showed him the bedroom in the Eggenberger house, which Kishen had swept clean the day before.
RamChandra emerged an hour later in a crisp and starched red cotton kurta and white churidar. He had fastened the collar on this simple dress with gold buttons and chain. Jivan had doubts about the man’s expected lecture, had hopes that he would not talk about revolution, but approved of this transformation; suddenly, Pandit RamChandra had become familiar.
The Indian men of the Imperial Valley arrived by early afternoon in a stream of wagons, on horseback, on buckboards, even in a gleaming Model T, the dust rising on the path to the Eggenberger farm. Under Jivan’s direction, Amarjeet told them to leave the vehicles in a fallow field in the back, where the gathering remained hidden from the road. The men arrived red-faced, with glistening skin, sweat-dampened shirts carrying the scent of physical exertion. Heat was trapped inside dastars and beards.
Amarjeet watered their horses while the guests stepped over crusted dirt, gathered under a large tent with open sides. They settled themselves on the rented wooden chairs that stood in long rows facing east. Behind them were tables with vessels of food, some of which Kishen and Ram had cooked, others that had been brought by the men themselves: bowls of lentils, fried vegetables, chicken curry, and goat korma.
More than two hundred men had come from the surrounding towns, and Jivan Singh knew them all. He had lent them farming implements, recommended them for loans, found them work. He had been their sardar and protector in an unfamiliar land. They greeted Kishen with humility, with palms pressed together, addressing her as chachi-ji, bringing her dishes to the tables and pouring water for other guests, things they would not have done in Punjab. It was not often that they gathered like this: all the countrymen living in older Calexico and younger Niland and all the fields and towns that lay in between.
They would not quiet down. Not even after their plates were emptied of food. Not even when Karak laughed with a small group in the back—“Make your tongues quiet or I’ll cut them out and dump you in the pond.” Only after RamChandra emerged from the Eggenberger house and appeared under the tent did the men, realizing him to be a stranger, sensing his importance, grow still.
Jivan introduced him. “Today Pandit RamChandra Bharadwaj has chosen to speak at this humble home.” Jivan faltered; he did not know what the man would speak about. “May some of his light shine on us.”
RamChandra took his place in front of the gathering. Jivan felt a flash of disappointment; he was without a warrior’s build, and perhaps unmanly. But when he opened his mouth to speak, when the attention of all was upon him, something great, something beyond the air of the Imperial Valley settled upon them.
“How many of you men are missing your families?” he asked, in the lilt of educated Punjabi, the language of a man who had read many books, who had spoken with political leaders, who had published newspapers read by the elite. “This man”—he indicated Jivan—“is also your family. For each of you, he has done some supreme good, just as your father would do. But tell me, are you not sick with the absence of your children and wives, who can never join you?”
Jivan stood to the side and watched as the men shifted their bodies. RamChandra had struck upon the quiet truth that bound them together. Perhaps his talk would not be about revolution after all.
“The American government will not allow them to come, yet other men, from other countries, bring their families. The Irish, the Germans, the Swiss—any European is accompanied by his bride. Or they tell their sweethearts, before they leave for this shore, ‘Wait for me. I will send for you.’ Even the Mexican, the African, the man from Japan may bring a wife.
“Just like these others, we Hindustanees have come to America for betterment.” His eyes scanned the gathering, as if he spoke to each man about his particular concerns. “But after arrival, we become the target of race prejudice. We are not invited into restaurants, or theater halls, or homes. The locals give us trouble in the streets and knock our dastars to the ground. They publish newspaper articles against us.”
The men were quiet. Every one had experienced the truth of RamChandra’s words.
“What is the difference between us and them? As men, there is no difference. Thomas Jefferson, the great American patriot, the third president, wrote these words in English, but I will say them in Punjabi: All men are created equal. We have certain inalienable rights. In the course of human events, it sometimes becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the bonds which connect them to another.
“These noble words describe a nation made of people with similar ideals. They have nothing to do with being of the same blood, or coming from the same soil. If that were the criteria, then only the native tribes should be here now.
“We are not treated as equals
in America. We are not treated as men. I ask you, my brothers—why? We have all heard about Hambelton; our men were ripped from their bunkhouses and beaten with sticks and bats.” Jivan craned his neck and searched for Ram among the crowd. He was seated in a corner near Kishen. His face had grown pale.
RamChandra went on. “They were pulled from their workstations at the mills. The police knew of this but instead of doing their work, they locked up our innocent countrymen in the city hall jail and said it was for their own protection! The next day they took them to the depot and told them to board a train and leave the town.”
A murmur went through the crowd. Jivan turned to the audience. No one had known that the police had escorted the Indians to the depot. Jivan felt a flush of foreboding. The gathering could not—should not—be pricked and prodded into rage on the soil of his farm.
But RamChandra did not seem bothered by the heightened feeling. His face was glistening. From out of the pocket of his kurta he plucked an embroidered handkerchief and dabbed his forehead. “When we at Ghadar heard of this, I made an appeal to the British consulate in San Francisco. After all, we are all British citizens, are we not? I demanded their help in bringing the rioters to justice. Do you know what they did?”
The audience looked toward him eagerly.
“Nothing.”
Once again, a murmur spread among the men.
“If we were white men from their country, or even white Canadians, or white Australians, how much they would have helped us!”
Jivan’s jaw clenched.
“That is when I knew the British were not, and could never be, our rightful government!”
Some of the men nodded. RamChandra wiped his brow again and spoke more slowly. “Then, a second insult. The Komagata Maru.” He whispered the words.
“Who among you has not heard about this ship? The steamer carried 376 of our countrymen, including two women, along with several children, across the Pacific Ocean to Vancouver. But when the ship reached the Canadian shore, the passengers were not permitted to dock. Already they had spent thirty-nine days at sea, but they were made to stay on board the ship in the harbor, and they were not provided enough food and water. Brothers! They were healthy when they arrived at the harbor! The immigration officials did not find any illness on board! But by the time they were forced to depart, they were sick and weak. In that condition, they are now journeying for weeks on the open ocean back to Calcutta. The Canadian government gave them food only after they submitted and agreed to turn back! Is it not cruel! Is it not unjust?
“I ask you—how many of you have on board that ship a cousin, a village-mate, a brother?”
As Jivan looked, four people raised their hands. Then he, slowly, raised his own. He had grown up in the same village as one of the men who had been listed on the ship’s manifest. The man was older than him by only a few seasons. Their families had known each other for generations; for years their mothers had chattered and yelled to each other from their huts, sometimes as friends, sometimes as enemies.
RamChandra continued: “Canada is a dominion of the British Empire. When an Indian journeys to Canada, he is a British subject traveling from British soil to British soil. But our people were not allowed to land. And the British consulate did not help us. Would a ship of white passengers have been treated the same way? Is this anything other than race prejudice of the white man against the brown man?”
Jivan was suddenly alarmed. To speak so openly of race prejudice—and on Stephen Eggenberger’s land—that felt like betrayal. What if Clive suddenly arrived and saw this gathering of Hindustanees and learned their purpose? What if he informed Stephen? The landlord had always been kind to him—but still. What if the sheriff came to know? Jivan breathed deeply to settle himself.
“The false peacefulness of the British Empire has made us impotent. The British tell us that being a citizen of their realm gives us greater freedom than we would have as mere Indians, but at every turn, they fail to represent us.”
Jivan stood, placed his hands on his waist, and approached RamChandra. Perhaps if he stepped close to the man, RamChandra would understand his discomfort and end his talk.
“In their British army, we serve as a subjugated race, helping them to subjugate other races. We serve as a colonized people, helping them control other colonies! We fight their wars, we build their railroads and bridges and farm their empire. We do the work the slave used to do! We replaced the African slaves when the slave trade was ended! Even now, we are fighting their war in Europe, which is of no concern to us. This is the global color line, my brothers! That everywhere around the world, the red man, the yellow man, the brown man, the black man . . . will be subjugated by the white man. This is the global color line!”
“Zulum!” someone yelled in the audience. “A crime! Zulum!” All the men began to talk at once, shouting, yelling.
It was a harangue, Jivan realized. He should have foreseen it. How could he end it now without embarrassing himself before these men?
“You all know—these Americans are full of hypocrisy. For the white man stole this continent from the red man who existed here before him, depriving him of every right. You will say, every day the white man subjugates the black man as if he were not human at all. You will say, the white man attacks us and robs our possessions even though we do good work at a too-low wage, a wage no white man would take, building the railroads for their travel, providing the lumber for their cities. Yet we cannot bring our wives and children with us, so that we may lead good and moral family lives! You say, America is not so different from Britain. They speak of equality for all people but they will not act to bring it about. Here is the truth, my comrades: the equality cult of these western democracies has rung hollow! Hollow!
“I am young and am not filled with your life knowledge. But I know that the ideal of equality itself cannot ring hollow. We Indians must have an equal nation. We must have a separate country. We must govern ourselves and stop our humiliation under British rule! Jai Hind! My brothers! Jai Hind!”
“Jai Hind!” A few men took up the cry. RamChandra paused. He dabbed his forehead with the handkerchief. The men quieted down.
“Pandit-ji,” Jivan said. But the man seemed not to have heard him.
“Now Britain is at war in Europe,” RamChandra continued. “She is distracted and weakened. We Hindustanees must return to Hindustan and take up arms against the oppressor!”
Fear clutched at Jivan. It had been years since he had fought in the British Indian Army, but he could not easily forget the pledge he had made. From across the tent, he saw Karak, Ram, Amarjeet, Kishen even, looking at him.
“That is why I ask now,” RamChandra continued, “who will join me in this fight to free India? Who will go back to our motherland and take up guns and rifles, link our arms—Sikh, Hindu, and Mussulman—and free our country? Who will rise up against the global color line and show the white man that they do not lead us, we lead ourselves! Who shall put muscle behind our salute, ‘Vande Mataram’? I ask you now—who will join us and fight? Become a hero, perhaps a martyr?”
The audience was shouting now, “Vande Mataram! Vande Mataram!”
“Pandit-ji—” Jivan said, courteous.
“The time is now, my brothers!”
“Pandit-ji!” Jivan said again, loudly, in the voice of command. “Stop this! I cannot allow it!” But he could barely be heard.
RamChandra held up his fist. His eyes grew wide with emotion. “Ferenghi maro!”
“Kill the foreigner! Ferenghi maro!”
Others took up the cry.
With two long strides Jivan placed himself between RamChandra and his audience. Some of the men began to take up the chant. “It is enough,” Jivan shouted, his voice booming. “It is enough! Let us finish now.” He turned to the men, indicated the tables. “Come. Take some more food,” he commanded.
RamChandra’s eyes darted from Jivan to the audience. “If I have given offense with my words, I beg your
pardon,” he said. He wiped his forehead again. He held his arms out wide, ignoring Jivan, shouting once more. “If any would join our just cause—stand! Stand now!”
There was a heated silence. A gust lifted sand from the scrub and swept it under the tent, stinging the men’s eyes. Jivan’s heartbeat echoed in the stillness. Then, slowly, in the back, Atta Singh stood up. Jivan felt faint. Ali Khan rose too. And Pakker Dillon. By the end, thirty men had stood.
“IT HAS GONE WELL for Ghadar today,” Karak said that evening. Some of the guests had not left until after sundown. The Singhs and RamChandra sat in the dark, drinking Karak’s whiskey. “So many new recruits. And money too.”
“We raised almost three thousand dollars,” RamChandra said.
He was no longer in front of an audience, and Jivan felt the man diminished, false, a viper in his own home. In the corner, sitting outside the circle of lamplight, his nephew watched and listened. He had been quiet ever since RamChandra had finished his lecture.
“Pandit-ji,” Ram said quietly.
“Brother.” RamChandra turned his full attention on Ram. His eyes were kind.
“I had two friends in Hambelton. Pala Singh, Shahpur village—”
“Pala Singh with hazel eyes?”
“Yes.”
Jivan and Karak exchanged a glance. Jivan had not told Karak about Ram’s fleeing the riot, but now he saw that Karak knew.
“He has joined the cause and sailed for Burma with some comrades,” RamChandra said. “He will join up with others in Japan.”
“He is in Burma?” Ram asked. To Jivan, he appeared relieved.
“Pala Singh is a very brave man.”
“And Shahpur Jodh Singh?” Ram asked, more boldly now.
RamChandra’s face darkened. “You know him?”
“Yes.”
“He could not join,” RamChandra said. “He was greatly injured—”
“How?” Ram asked, too quickly.
“His arm. He has gone to the gurdwara in Stockton to recover. Maybe he’ll stay there permanently, if the granthi can find work for him. He cannot use his arm again.”