by Paul Scott
During my interrogation the Superintendent said, ‘Isn’t it true that you are a close friend of Kumar and that on the night of the 9th of August you and Kumar and your other friends were drinking in the hut near the Bibighar bridge and that then you left them because they were beginning to talk badly about going into the cantonment to find a woman?’
I saw that he was offering me a chance to ingratiate myself and bear false witness, and so much fearful as I was of being beaten, I said no it was not true, only it was true that I knew Hari Kumar and some of the boys he named, but on the night of the 9th August I was working late at offices of Mayapore Hindu ‘subbing’ the reports of outbreaks that had taken place during the day in Dibrapur and Tanpur, and that my editor would no doubt testify to this. I was speaking truth and the Superintendent was angry because he knew I was speaking it. He said, ‘You’ll regret your lying before I’ve done with you.’ He then left me alone in the room. I looked round for ways of escape but there was not even a window through which I might attempt to regain my longed-for freedom. The room was lighted by one electric bulb. There was a table and a chair at which the policeman had been sitting and the stool on which I was sitting. In one corner there was an iron trestle.
When I realised that there was no escape I prayed for strength to endure my torture without giving away the names of my accomplices. I thought that in a moment they would come for me and that the Superintendent Sahib was even now ordering them to prepare things. But he came back alone and sat down at the desk again and started to ask all the same questions. I do not know how long all this went on. I was hungry and thirsty. After some time he left the room again without succeeding in hearing any different thing from me and two constables came in and took me into a truck and drove me to the jail in Jail road. On the way I hoped to be rescued by our people, but the truck drove very fast and there was no incident. I was in this jail for a week and was then taken to Court and charged with printing and publishing seditious literature. A police spy gave evidence of seeing me throw the pamphlet into the kotwali, which was not true, but I could not prove it. Also the illegal press had been found, no doubt also as result of spying, and all my accomplices apprehended. I was sentenced to two years rigorous imprisonment. To serve my sentence I was sent to the jail near Dibrapur and locked at first into a filthy cell. I believed that the Superintendent in Mayapore had given orders for me to be especially harshly treated. At first I could not eat the disgusting food they gave me, hungry though I was. One day I quite lost my reason and threw the plate on the floor. The next day I was taken out of my cell and told that for infringing prison regulations I was to receive fifteen strokes of the cane. They took me at once into a small room and there I saw the same kind of iron trestle I had seen in the room where the Superintendent had questioned me. They showed me the cane they were going to use. It was about four feet long and half an inch thick. They stripped me of all my clothes, bent me over the trestle and tied my wrists and ankles and carried out ‘the sentence’. Towards the end I could no longer support my suffering and fainted away.
I was sent later to another prison. I was allowed no communication with anyone, not even my family. They told me one day that my mother was dead. I wept and begged of God to be forgiven for the suffering I had caused her, in this freedom-work I had felt I had to do. I did not resent any of my punishment because I was guilty of all the ‘crimes’ I was punished for. I did not think of them as being crimes and therefore my punishment was not punishment but part of the sacrifice I was called upon to make.
It was towards the end of my imprisonment that one of the boys who had been accused of the attack on the English woman was brought also into this prison from another jail. These boys had all been kept in separate prisons because the authorities had wished to keep them apart no doubt so that two of them should not confirm the story of their unjust punishment to fellow prisoners. When I saw this boy I cried out in amazement because I had thought they were all tried and condemned long ago. In prison I had heard once that they were hanged. But this boy told me there had never been any evidence against them. He thought it had been all a ‘put-up job’, and that there was probably no rape in the Bibighar at all. Finally the authorities had locked them all up as undesirables, all being known or suspected of indulging in subversive activities. We were not able to speak often to each other and he seemed too much afraid to talk about the rumours I had heard of torture and defilement.
When I was released from prison, my own home was no longer available. I had frequently to report to the police. My old employer Mr Laxminarayan found lodging for me and gave me some work so that I could keep body and soul together. I was in poor health and weighed only 97 pounds and was much troubled with coughing. In time I was able to regain some of my health and strength.
Of the boys arrested after the attack in the Bibighar only one of them I ever saw again who came back to live in Mayapore. This was the boy who came to the prison where I was. Hearing he was back in his home I visited him and asked him, ‘Why were you afraid to speak much to me?’ Even still he was reluctant to tell. He had suffered much and was afraid of the police who, he said, were always watching him. Still in those days the British were in power and had won the war and we wondered somewhat hopelessly about the future even though people kept saying that this time the British were really getting ready to quit.
This boy was speaking to me one evening in Mayapore, towards the end of 1946, and suddenly he said, ‘I will tell you.’ He spoke for a long time. He said that on the night of Bibighar when he and the other four who were still drinking in the hut were arrested they were taken at once to Police headquarters and locked in a cell. At this time only they knew that they had been caught drinking illegal liquor and were laughing and joking. Then they saw Hari Kumar brought in. His face was cut and bruised. They thought that this had been done by the police. One of them called out, ‘Hello, Hari’, but Kumar was not taking any notice. After that, except for my informant, none of the boys saw Kumar again. My informant was telling me all this in confidence, so I prefer to respect that and not divulge his name. These days all these things are forgotten and we are living different lives. Our young men today are not taking any interest in such matters. So I will call my friend ‘Sharma’ which is not his name nor the name of any of the other boys. Sharma was a fine, strong fellow, who like me had been ‘a great one for the ladies’ as a youth but had also somewhat reformed. He and his companions, other than Kumar, were locked in one cell, and taken out one by one. As one by one they went and did not come back, those remaining were no longer laughing and joking. They had also headache from too much drinking and were very much thirsty. Finally only Sharma was left. When his turn came he was taken downstairs by two constables and told to strip. When he was standing there naked one of the constables knocked at a door at the far end of the room and opened it and the District Superintendent came in. ‘Sharma’ was greatly humiliated to be forced to stand there so immodestly, especially in front of a white man. The constables now held Sharma’s arms behind him and then the Superintendent – who carried a little stick – came over and held the stick out and lifted the exposed private parts and stared at them for some seconds. Sharma did not understand why this embarrassment should be done on him. He said, ‘Why are you doing this, Superintendent Sahib?’ The policeman said nothing. After inspecting the clothing which Sharma had been made to take off – also using the little stick to turn the clothing over and look at it – the policeman left the room. Later, of course, Sharma realised that the policeman was looking for evidence of rape practised upon a lady who had bled. When the Superintendent had gone the constables told Sharma to put on his underdrawers, but they did not give him back any of his other clothes. He was now taken out of the room by another door where he found his drinking companions in a cell, also wearing nothing but their underdrawers. Kumar was not with them. They tried to joke again, asking why the Sahib was so interested in certain parts of their bodies, but they were not feeling
like laughing in this instance. Then one by one they were again taken away, and did not come back. When Sharma’s turn came – and he was again the last – he was taken into the room where he had been stripped, and found the Superientendent sitting behind a desk. I think this was the same room in which Superintendent Sahib questioned me two evenings later. Sharma was not given a stool to sit on, however. He was made to stand in front of the desk. Then he was questioned. He did not understand the questions because he was thinking only of being charged with drinking home-distilled toddy. But suddenly the Superintendent said, ‘How did you know she would be in the Bibighar Gardens?’ and he began to see what might be behind all this rigmarole because of the word ‘she’ and the humiliation recently practised on him. But still he did not know what the policeman was trying to find out, until the policeman said, ‘I’m inquiring into the attack and criminal assault on the English girl this evening, the girl who thought your friend Kumar was also a friend of hers.’ Then there were many questions, such as, ‘When did Kumar suggest all you fellows going together? Was she there when you arrived? How long did you wait for her? Who was the first man to assault her? You were led by Kumar, weren’t you? If it hadn’t been for Kumar you would never have thought of going to the Bibighar, would you? Were you just the fellow who was told to keep watch and never had the chance to enjoy her? Why should you suffer for the others if you just kept watch? How many times did you enjoy her, then? How many times did Kumar enjoy her? Why are you afraid? A fellow who has enjoyed drinking a lot of liquor starts thinking also about enjoying a woman, doesn’t he? Why do you blame yourself for a perfectly natural thing? You shouldn’t have drunk the liquor, but you did, and look what’s happened. Why don’t you be a man and admit that you drank too much and felt passionate? You’re no weakling. You’re a fine healthy fellow. Why be ashamed to admit your natural desires? If I drink too much liquor I also feel these things quite badly. There’s no sign of blood on you or on your underclothes. She wasn’t a virgin, was she? And you were the first fellow because you were the most passionate and couldn’t wait. Isn’t that it? Or perhaps you’ve been careful to wash? Or change your underclothes? Knowing what you have done was wrong? Knowing you would have to suffer if you were caught? Well, you are caught and have to suffer. Be a man and admit you deserve punishment. If you admit you deserve punishment you’ll be let off lightly because I understand this kind of thing. And she wasn’t a virgin, was she? She went with anyone who was able to satisfy her. And liked brown-skinned fellows. That’s what young Hari Kumar told you, isn’t it? Isn’t it?’
This you see is what Sharma so much remembered. How the policeman finally kept saying, Isn’t it? Isn’t it? and banging his stick on the desk, because losing his temper at Sharma’s all the time saying he knew nothing of what the Superintendent Sahib was talking about.
Then the policeman threw the stick on the desk and said, ‘I see there’s only one way to break you’ and he called out to the constables who took Sharma into the next room and through a door into another room. This room was even more dimly lit but he saw Kumar, naked, fastened over one of the iron trestles. In this position also I know it is difficult to breathe. Sharma said he did not know how long Kumar had been fastened in this way, but he said he could hear the sound of Kumar trying to breathe. He did not know at first that it was Kumar. Only he could see the blood on his buttocks. But then the policeman, the Superintendent, came in and said, ‘Kumar, here’s a friend of yours come to hear you confess. Just say “Yes, I was the man who organised the rape” and you’ll be released from this contraption and won’t be beaten any more.’ Sharma said that Kumar only made ‘a sort of sound’ so the Superintendent Sahib gave an order and a constable came forward with a cane and gave Kumar several strokes. Sharma shouted out to Kumar that he knew nothing and had said nothing. He also shouted, ‘Why are you treating this fellow so?’ He said the constables then continued to beat Kumar until he groaned. Sharma could not look at this terrible punishment. After a while he was taken away and locked alone in a cell. Ten minutes or so later he was taken back into the room where Kumar had been. The trestle was now unoccupied. He was fastened to it after they had taken off his underdrawers. He said they then put what felt like a wet cloth on his buttocks and gave him nine strokes. He said the pain was so awful that he could not understand how Kumar had borne so much of it. They put the wet cloth over him so that his skin should not be cut and leave permanent marks. When they had finished he was taken back to the cell. Later he was put into another cell where his companions were. Kumar was not with them. He told them what had been done to him and to Kumar. The others had not been beaten but were afraid their turn was coming. The youngest of them began to weep. They did not at all understand what was happening. By now it was early morning. The Superintendent came down to the cell, with two constables. The constables were ordered to show the others what even nine strokes of the cane over a wet cloth could do to the buttocks. They held Sharma down and uncovered him. Then the Superintendent said that if any one of them so much as hinted at any time, to any person, during their ‘forthcoming interrogation, trial and punishment’ that any one of them had been ‘hurt’ or harshly treated, they would all suffer even more severely the punishment Sharma could describe to them both from personal experience and from having seen another man undergo it.
Half an hour later some food was brought in. They were hungry and tired and frightened. They began to eat. After a few mouthfuls also they vomited. The ‘mutton’ in the curry was beef. The two Muslim jailors who were standing watching them laughed and told them that now they were outcastes and even God had turned his face from them.
Part Seven
THE BIBIGHAR GARDENS
Daphne Manners (Journal addressed to Lady Manners) Kashmir, April 1943
I am sorry, Auntie, for all the trouble and embarrassment I’ve caused you. I began to apologise once before, when Aunt Lili brought me back to Rawalpindi, last October, but you wouldn’t listen. So I apologise now, not for my behaviour but for the effect it’s had on you who did nothing to deserve our exile. But I want to thank you, too, for your loving care of me, for voluntarily taking on the responsibility of looking after me, and for never once making me feel that this was a burden, although I know it must have been, and is as bad here where you see hardly anyone as it was in Pindi where so many of your old friends made themselves scarce. I sometimes try to put myself in your shoes and work out what it must be like to be the aunt of ‘that Manners girl’. I know that’s how people speak of me and think of me, and that it rubs off on to you. And all the marvellous things you and Uncle Henry did to make things seem right in India, for English people, are forgotten. This is really what I mean when I say I’m sorry. Sorry for giving people who criticised you and Uncle Henry the last word, for seeming to prove to them that everything you and he stood for was wrong.
The awful thing is that if you ever read this I shan’t be here to smile and make the apology look human and immediate. If I get through to the other side of what I have to face we shall probably continue in the state we live in at the moment, of talking about as few subjects as possible that can remind either of us of the real reason why we are here. You won’t in that case read this because I only write it as an insurance against permanent silence. I write it because I have premonitions of not getting through and I should hate to kick the bucket knowing I’d made no attempt to set the record straight and break the silence we both seem to have agreed is okay for the living, if not for the dead. Sorry about the morbid note! I don’t feel morbid, just prepared. Perhaps I’ve felt like that all along, ever since the doctor in London told me to take it easy and stop driving ambulances in the black-out. Possibly the suspicion that I had to cram as much of my life as I could into as short a time as possible accounts for things I’ve done that people settled into the comfortable groove of three score and ten would reckon hasty and ill-advised.
If I’m right, and my premonitions aren’t just morbid fancies, it woul
d be odd, wouldn’t it, how someone who looks so strong and healthy could be really just a mess of physiological sums added up wrong! After Mother died I used to be afraid of getting cancer. I’ve since been afraid of a tumour on the brain, to account for my poor sight and occasional headaches. All these sophisticated diseases also afflict Indian peasants but they are just statistics in the records of the birth and death rates and life expectancy charts. I often wish that I could feel and think myself equally anonymous, stricken (if I must be stricken) by God, and not by something the doctors know all about and can account and prepare you for.
But let me say this; medically I feel there is only one thing really ‘wrong’ with me, and that this may only be wrong for me because I’m not very efficiently put together. Like the doctor in Pindi, Dr Krishnamurti talks about a Caesarian. I’ve said that I don’t want that. Maybe I’m just pigheaded, but you’ve no idea how important it is to me to try to do this thing properly. I don’t want to be cut open, to have the child torn out like that. I want to bear it. I want to give it life, not have its life or my life or both our lives saved for us by clever doctors. I want to try my best to end with a good conscience what I began with one. I think Dr Krishnamurti almost understands this. He looks at me in such an odd way. And this is another thing I am so thankful to you for, that you’ve never even thought of distinguishing between an English and an Indian doctor, let alone resisted my consulting an Indian. Long ago (well, it seems long ago but can’t have been much more than a year) I wrote to you from Mayapore saying how glad I was that I’d had the fortune to be with someone like you instead of like the Swinsons (whom I always remember as ‘my first colonials’. And what a shock they were to me!) If I’d been their niece then even if they hadn’t packed me off somewhere out of the way they’d never have allowed anyone but a white doctor to come near me. But perhaps if I’d been a niece of the Swinsons I’d have run a mile rather than see Dr Krishnamurti anyway. Or would never have got into what the Swinsons no doubt call ‘this mess’.