‘How clever you are, babu,’ said a man staring at the lecturer. He was impressed by the babu’s speech, but baffled. To him Gandhi was a legend, a tradition, an oracle. He had heard from time to time during the last fourteen years, how a saint had arisen as great as Guru Nanak, the incarnation of Krishanji Maharaj of whom the Ferungi Sarkar was very afraid. His wife had told him of the miracles which this saint was performing. It was said that he slept in a temple one night with his feet towards the shrine of the god. When the Brahmins had chastised him, for deliberately turning his feet towards God, he told them that God was everywhere and asked them to turn his feet in the direction where God was not. Upon this the priests turned his feet in the direction opposite to the one where the image of the god was, and lo the shrine of God moved in the direction of his feet. He had hungered for a sight of the saint since then. His wife wouldn’t be content with anything less than a touch of the Holy Man’s feet. But it was a good thing she wasn’t with him. The peasant reflected that if she had come, the boys would have wished to accompany her, and they might have been crushed to death in the throng. It was a good thing they didn’t know. For myself, I am glad I shall see him. It is lucky he is coming on the day that I came out shopping.
Bakha had listened hard to the babu, and, although he couldn’t follow every sentence of his rhetorical outburst, he had somehow got the sense of it all.
‘Tell me, babu,’ Bakha heard the yokel say to the round, felt-capped, bespectacled man who had made the oration, ‘will he look after the canals when the Ferungis have gone?’ It seemed the peasant had more than a vague idea of what Gandhi was about.
‘Bhai ji, don’t you know,’ said the babu, ‘that according to Mr Radha Kamal Mukerji we had canals in ancient India four thousand years before Christ. Who made the Grand Trunk Road? Not the British!’
‘But what about the law suits?’ asked the jat. ‘The five elders of my village use the Panchayat to wreak vengeance on their enemies, or to bring pressure on the village menials, if they become too independent, and I hear Gandhi says we must not go to the Sarkari Adalat, but must take up our suits to the Panchayat.’
‘A good Panchayat,’ replied the babu sonorously, ‘can get the villagers to do their bit from time to time in preventing damage by erosion and other causes. It may not be a good, judicial body now, but it was, and always has been so in the past. So far as affairs of executive action are concerned, however, you know that the Panchayats have done much good in the service of this country, in the cause of good administration in general, in making wells, rebuilding roads, etc.’
The peasant didn’t understand that. Nor did Bakha. But the mention of village menials by the peasant recalled to Bakha’s mind the fact that he had heard that Gandhi was very keen on uplifting the Untouchables. Hadn’t it been rumoured in the outcastes’ colony, lately, that Gandhi was fasting for the sake of the bhangis and chamars. Bakha could not quite understand what fasting had to do with helping the low-castes. ‘Probably he thinks we are poor and can’t get food,’ he vaguely surmised, ‘so he tries to show that even he doesn’t have food for days.’
‘We are willing to do all we can,’ the lalla disturbed Bakha’s cogitations with a dramatic gesture towards the babu. ‘We can boycott Manchester cotton and Bradford fancies, if it is going to mean that in the end we will have a monopoly of swadeshi cloth. I hear, however, that Gandhiji is making terms with Japan.’
‘You must ask the Mahatma that,’ the babu replied, flurried because he heard noises at the gate from which he presumed that Gandhi was approaching. He wanted to work his way to a position from which he could obtain a good view of the great man.
‘Mahatmaji is not speaking about swadeshi, or on civil disobedience,’ put in a Congress volunteer authoritatively. ‘The government has allowed him out of gaol only if he will keep strictly within the limits of his propaganda for harijans, for the removal of untouchability.’ And he walked away after this declamation, showing a little of the glory that he assumed, on account of his powerful position, as an official appointed to serve the community during the reception to be given to Gandhi.
‘Harijan!’ Bakha wondered what that meant. He had heard the word before in connection with Gandhi. ‘But it has something to do with us, the bhangis and chamars,’ he said to himself. ‘We are harijans, sons of God.’ He recalled how some Congress men had come to the outcastes’ street a month ago and lectured about harijans, saying they were no different from the Hindus and their touch did not mean pollution. The phrase, as it dropped from the mouth of the volunteer, had gone through Bakha’s soul and body. He knew it applied to him. ‘It is good that I came!’ he thought. ‘Is he really going to talk about the outcastes, about us, about Chota, Ram Charan, my father and me? What will he say, I wonder? Strange that the sahib of the Mukti said that the rich and the poor, the Brahmins and bhangis are the same. Now Gandhi Mahatma will talk about us! It is good that I came. If only he knew what had happened to me this morning. I would like to get up and tell him.’ He imagined himself rising on the platform, when all was still and the meeting had begun, and telling the Mahatma that a man from the city, where he had come to remove untouchability, had abused him for accidentally touching him and had also slapped him. Then the Mahatma would chastise that man, perhaps, or, at least, he would chide the citizens here, and they wouldn’t treat him again as they did this morning. He seemed to get a thrill, imagining himself in this scene. He felt theatrical. Then a queer stirring started in his stomach. He was confused. His face was flushed and his ears reddened. His breath came and went quickly. A chorus of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai,’ released his tension, as it came from the distance and chilled the heat of his body with a sudden fear that it brought to his soul.
He looked across and saw that a vast crowd had rushed the gates of the golbagh and surrounded a motor-car in which, presumably, the Mahatma was travelling. He didn’t know what to do, stand still or rush. He realized he couldn’t rush even though the Mahatma had abolished all caste distinctions for the day. He might touch someone and then there would be a scene. The Mahatma would be too far away to come and help him. He hesitated for a moment, then he looked at the tree overhead. There were some people perched on the branches like vultures waiting for their prey. He made for the trunk. His ammunition boots were an encumbrance but he scrambled up using his knees as rests against the round trunk. He looked not unlike an ape as he sat commanding a view of the advancing procession along the road.
Behind a screen of flower petals showered by ardent devotees under many coloured flags, with garlands of marigolds, jasmine and molsari around his neck, amid cries of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai. Hindu–Mussulman– Sikh ki jai, Harijan ki jai,’ the great little man came into sight. His body was swathed in a milk-white blanket, and only his dark, clean-shaven head was visible, with its protruding big ears, its expansive forehead, its long nose, bridged by a pair of glasses. There was a quixotic smile on his thin lips, something Mephistophelean in the determined little chin immediately under his mouth and the long toothless jaws resting on his small neck. But withal there was something beautiful and saintly in the face, whether it was the well-oiled scalp that glistened round the little tuft of hair on the top, or the aura of the astral self that shone like an aureole about him.
Bakha looked at the Mahatma with a mixed feeling of wonder, reverence, and fear. The sage seemed to him like a child, as he sat huddled up between two women, an Indian and an English woman.
‘That’s Kasturabai Gandhi,’ Bakha heard a schoolboy whisper to a friend, who sat on a branch of the tree next to him.
‘And who is the other lady?’ the boy asked.
‘Mahatmaji’s English disciple, Miss Slade, Miraben. She is the daughter of an English Admiral.’
‘He is black like me,’ Bakha said to himself. ‘But, of course, he must be very educated.’ And he waited tensely for the car which was marooned right under his eyes among the throngs of men and women seeking to touch the Mahatma’s feet. The Co
ngress volunteers struggled to carve a way through the turbans and fezes and boat-like Gandhi caps, and, at last, they succeeded in getting the open car under way. Half pushed, half towed, with the engines shut off, the chauffeur steered the vehicle to the gate, improvised at one end of the oval, with broad-leafed banana trees decorated with flowers and paper-festoons.
Bakha saw a sallow-faced Englishman, whom he knew to be the District Superintendent of Police, standing by the roadside in a khaki uniform of breeches, polished leather gaiters and blue puggareed, khaki sun helmet, not as smart as the military officers’, but, of course, possessing for Bakha all the qualities of the sahib’s clothes. Somehow, at this moment, Bakha was not interested in sahibs, probably because in the midst of this enormous crowd of Indians, fired with an enthusiasm for their leader, the foreigner seemed out of place, insignificant, the representative of an order which seemed to have nothing to do with the natives.
‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ the cry went thundering up into the smoke-scented evening. Bakha’s attention was switched off the man who held the sceptre of British rule in the form of his formidable truncheon, and turned to the diminutive figure of the Mahatma, now seated in the lotus seat on the Congress pandal, surrounded by devotees, who had come soft-footed up the steps, joined hands in obeisance to the master, touched the dust at his feet, and scattered to sit around him.
The Mahatma raised his right arm from the folds of his shawl and blessed the crowd with a gentle benediction. The babble of voices died out, as if he had sent an electric shock through the mass of humanity gathered at his feet. This strange man seemed to have the genius that could, by a single dramatic act, rally multi-coloured, multi-tongued India to himself. Someone stood up to chant a hymn. The Mahatma had closed his eyes and was praying. In the stillness of the moment, Bakha forgot all the details of his experience during the day, the touched man, the priest, the woman in the alley, his father, Chota, Ram Charan, the walk in the hills, the missionary and his wife. Except for the turbaned, capped and aproned heads of the men and women sitting on the grass before him, his eyes seemed intent on one thing and one thing alone, Gandhi, and he heard each syllable of the Hindi hymn:
‘The dawn is here, O traveller arise;
Past is the night, and yet sleep seals thine eyes.
Lost is the soul that sleeps—dost not thou know?
The sleepless one finds peace beyond all woe.
Oh, waken! Shed thou thy slumber deep
Remember him who made thee and oh, weep.
For shame, is this the way of love—to sleep
When he himself doth ceaseless vigil keep?
Repent O soul, from sin and find release,
O erring one, in sin there is no peace.
What boots it now to mourn on bended knees,
When thou thyself didst thine own load increase?
What thou wouldst do tomorrow do today,
Do thou the task thou must face today.
What shall avail thy sorrow and dismay;
When thieving birds have borne thy grain away.’
Bakha’s attention began to flag. His mind wandered. He thought of the race he had to run to get here. He noticed how still everyone was. It irked him to see everyone so serious. The silence was getting on his nerves. But a part of him seemed to have flown, to have evaporated. He felt he had lost something of himself and was uneasy on account of it, yet thrilled about it, happy. He felt pleased to be sharing the privilege of being in a crowd gathered before the Mahatma. The hymn seemed so heavy. Yet the other feeling was light. The sage seemed so pure. And there was something intimate and warm about him. He smiled like a child. Bakha gazed at him. It was the only way in which he could escape feeling self-conscious. By doing that he forgot himself and everything else, as he felt he ought to. The brown and black faces below him were full of stilled rapture. He sought to feel like them, attentively absorbed. Luckily for him, just then, the Mahatma began his speech. It was a faint whisper at first, the Mahatma’s voice, as it came through a loud-speaker:
‘I have emerged,’ he said slowly, as if he were measuring each word and talking more to himself than to anyone else, ‘from an ordeal of a penance, undertaken for a cause which is as dear to me as life itself. The British Government sought to pursue a policy of divide and rule in giving to our brethren of the depressed classes separate electorates in the Councils that will be created under the new constitution. I do not believe that the bureaucracy is sincere in its efforts to elaborate the new constitution. But it is one of the conditions under which I have been released from gaol that I shall not carry on any propaganda against the government. So I shall not refer to that matter. I shall only speak about the so-called “Untouchables”, whom the government tried to alienate from Hinduism by giving them a separate legal and political status.
‘As you all know, while we are asking for freedom from the grip of a foreign nation, we have ourselves, for centuries, trampled underfoot millions of human beings without feeling the slightest remorse for our iniquity. For me, the question of these people is moral and religious. When I undertook to fast unto death for their sake, it was in obedience to the call of my conscience.’
Bakha didn’t understand these words. He was restless. He hoped the Mahatma wouldn’t go on speaking of things he couldn’t understand. He found his wish fulfilled, for a potent word interpreted his thoughts.
‘I regard untouchability,’ the Mahatma was saying, ‘as the greatest blot on Hinduism. This view of mine dates back to the time when I was a child.’
That was getting interesting. Bakha pricked up his ears. ‘I was hardly yet twelve when this idea dawned on me. A scavenger named Uka, an Untouchable, used to attend our house for cleaning the latrines. Often I would ask my mother why it was wrong to touch him, and why I was forbidden to do so. If I accidentally touched Uka, I was asked to perform ablutions; and though I naturally obeyed, it was not without smilingly protesting that untouchability was not sanctioned by religion and that it was impossible that it should be so. I was a very dutiful and obedient child; but, so far as was consistent with respect for my parents, I often had arguments with them on this matter. I told my mother that she was entirely wrong in considering physical contact with Uka as sinful; it could not be sinful.
‘While on my way to school, I used to touch the Untouchables; and, as I never would conceal the fact from my parents, my mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch, was to cancel it by touching a Mussulman passing by. Therefore, simply out of reverence and regard for my mother, I often did so, but never did it believing it to be a religious obligation.’
As each part of the story which the Mahatma related about the beginning of his interest in untouchability fell on his ears, Bakha felt as if he were Uka, the scavenger. By feeling like that, he thought, he would be nearer the sage who seemed a real and genuine sympathizer. ‘But the speech, the speech,’ he became aware that he was missing the words of the Mahatma’s speech. He eagerly returned his attention.
‘The fact that we address God as “the purifier of the polluted souls” makes it a sin to regard anyone born in Hinduism as polluted—it is satanic to do so. I have never been tired of repeating that it is a great sin. I do not say that this thing crystallized in me at the age of twelve, but I do say that I did then regard untouchability as a sin.
‘I was at Nellore on the National Day. I met the Untouchables there, and I prayed as I have done today. I do want to attain spiritual deliverance. I do not want to be reborn. But if I have to be reborn, I should wish to be reborn as an Untouchable, so that I may share their sorrows, sufferings and the affronts levelled at them, in order that I may endeavour to free myself and them from their miserable condition. Therefore, I prayed that, if I should be born again, I should be so, not as a Brahmin, Kshatriya, Vaishya, Shudra, but as an outcaste, as an Untouchable.
‘I love scavenging. In my ashram, an eighteen-year-old Brahmin lad is doing a scavenger�
��s work, in order to teach the ashram scavenger cleanliness. The lad is no reformer. He was born and bred in orthodoxy. He is a regular reader of the Gita, and faithfully says his prayers. When he conducts the prayers, his soft melodies melt one in love. But he felt that his accomplishments were incomplete until he had also become a perfect sweeper. He felt that if he wanted the ashram sweeper to do his work well he must do it himself and set an example.’
Bakha felt thrilled. A tremor went down his spine. That the Mahatma should want to be born as an outcaste! That he should love scavenging! He adored the man. He felt he could put his life in his hands and ask him to do what he liked with it. For him he would do anything. He would like to go and be a scavenger at his ashram. ‘Then I could talk to him,’ he said to himself. ‘But I am not listening, I am not listening; I must listen.’
Classic Mulk Raj Anand Page 17