For Freedom
I no longer remember the year, but they were days when ‘Long Live the Revolution’ rang through the streets of Amritsar. There was a youthfulness to those slogans; they seemed to have something of the spirit of the region’s peasantry who, with baskets of manure on their heads, would slice through the city’s bazaars. What days they were! The fear that had hung in the air after Jallianwala Bagh had wholly disappeared. And a fearless longing had taken its place, a blind abandon, ignorant of all destination.
People shouted slogans, held demonstrations, were arrested in the dozens. Getting arrested became an amusing pastime—arrested in the morning; released in the evening; tried; sentenced to a few months in prison; released; a slogan shouted; imprisoned again.
They were days full of life. A tiny bubble could burst and cause a whirlpool. Someone standing in a square might say, ‘There should be a strike.’ And there was a strike. A ripple would rise: every man ought to wear khadi so that all Lancashire’s mills would close, and a boycott on foreign cloth would begin, pyres springing up in every square. People became impassioned, and then and there, tore off their clothes and flung them into the fire. If some woman threw down an unwanted sari from her balcony, the crowd applauded till its hands were sore.
I remember a bonfire outside a police station near the town hall. Sheikhoo, a classmate of mine, grew impassioned, and taking off his silk coat, threw it into the bonfire of foreign cloth. A sea of applause rose because Sheikhoo was the son of a well-known toady. The poor fool, growing still more passionate, took off his silk kurta and surrendered it to the fire. He only realised later that his gold buttons had gone with it!
But, I can’t mock Sheikhoo; I was pretty wild in those days myself. I wanted to get my hands on a pistol and start a terrorist organisation. It didn’t even occur to me that my father was a government pensioner; there was ferment in my heart akin to the kind one has in a game of flash.
School had never really interested me, but during that time, I developed a hatred for my studies. I’d leave the house with my books and head straight to Jallianwala Bagh. I’d stay there till the school day was over, observing the political activities or just lying under a tree’s shadow, looking at the women in the windows of houses beyond, certain that I would soon fall in love with one of them. Why, I can’t say.
There was plenty of bustle at the time in Jallianwala Bagh. Tents and makeshift walls had come up everywhere. In the biggest camp, every two or three days, a ‘dictator’ was appointed who all the volunteers would offer their salaams to. For two to three days, ten to fifteen at the maximum, this dictator would sit there, khadi clad, accepting the greetings of men and women with feigned seriousness. He would collect rice and wheat from the city’s merchants for the communal kitchen and drink endless lassis, which always seemed to be abundant in Jallianwala Bagh. Then, suddenly one day, he’d be arrested and taken off to prison.
I had an old classmate called Shahzada Ghulam Ali. The facts I’m about to recount now will give you some idea of our friendship: we failed the matric exam together, twice; we ran away from home once and went to Bombay. We thought we’d go on to Russia, but our money ran out and we were forced to sleep on pavements, at which point, we wrote letters home, begged forgiveness and made our way back.
Shahzada Ghulam Ali was a beautiful young man. He was tall and fair in the Kashmiri way, with a fine nose, playful eyes and great, rakish charm.
When we were in school, he was not called Shahzada, but later, the city’s revolutionary activities took hold of him. He attended some ten–fifteen meetings, and the demonstrations, the slogans, the garlands of marigolds, the passionate songs, the talk of freedom with lady volunteers, turned him into an amateur revolutionary. Then, one morning he made his first speech. The following day I read in the newspaper that Ghulam Ali had been made Shahzada.
Ghulam Ali became famous throughout Amritsar after he was made Shahzada. It was a small town; it didn’t take long to acquire either a good reputation or a bad one. Where average men were concerned, Amritsaris were very discerning. They were forever exposing each other’s failings, but turned a blind eye to those of their leaders. Perhaps because they were always hungry for a political movement or a stirring speech. A man could be white one day and black the next, but in Amritsar, by changing his colours, a politician could stay alive quite a while. It was a different time—all the big leaders were in jail, their chairs were empty, and though the people had no special need of leaders, the current movement desperately needed men willing to sit, khadi clad, for a day or two in Jallianwala Bagh’s big tents before making a speech and getting arrested.
At the time, new dictatorships sprang up all across Europe. Hitler and Mussolini were being heavily promoted. And perhaps under this influence, the Congress party began churning out ‘dictators’ of its own. By the time it came round to Shahzada Ghulam Ali’s turn, some forty ‘dictators’ had already been arrested.
I rushed to Jallianwala Bagh as soon as I found out that Ghulam Ali had been made dictator. Outside the big tent, there was a volunteers’ guard. But when Ghulam Ali saw me from inside, he waved me in. There was a mattress on the floor, over which a khadi cover had been draped. It was on this that Ghulam, leaning against a bolster, sat with a few khadi clad merchants, discussing vegetables, I believe. In a few a minutes, he finished this conversation, gave a few volunteers their orders, and turned his attention towards me. It tickled me to see this uncharacteristic seriousness, and when he sent away the volunteers, I laughed out loud. ‘So then, Mr Shahzada, tell me more?’
And though I sat there at length, poking fun at Ghulam Ali, I sensed a change in him, a change of which he was not unaware himself. He said many times to me, ‘Don’t Saadat, don’t make fun of me. I know that the head is small and the crown big, but from now on, this is my life.’
Every evening Jallianwala Bagh filled with people. Because I came early, I found a place close to the platform. Ghulam Ali appeared after loud applause, handsome and attractive, in spotless white khadi clothes. His rakish charm made him seem still more attractive. He spoke for about an hour. During the course of the speech, there were many moments when the hairs on my body stood on end. Once or twice, I even wished that I could explode like a bomb, thinking perhaps India might become free if I did.
The years that have passed since then! To now recount that time and the feelings it aroused in us, is difficult. But as I sit down to write this story, and think of Ghulam Ali’s speech, it is the voice of youth, a youth wholly untainted by politics, that rings in my ears. It contained the pure fearlessness of a young man who seemed, in a moment, to be able to grab a young woman, also travelling the road, and to say to her, ‘Listen, I want you’, and in the next, to be imprisoned by the law. Since then, I’ve had the good fortune to listen to many more speeches, but that madness, that extreme youth, that adolescent feeling, the boyish timbre I heard that night in Shahzada Ghulam Ali’s voice, I haven’t heard so much as a faint echo of again. The speeches I hear now are cold, serious, heavy with stale politics and writerly glibness.
At that time, both the government as well as the public were still inexperienced. They were at each other’s throats with no thought of the consequences. The government imprisoned people without understanding what it meant. And the imprisoned went to jail without knowing what their objective was.
It was a sham of sorts, but a combustible sham. People leapt up like flames, burnt and died, then flamed again. And with this flaming and dying, the sad, sleep-filled atmosphere of bondage was infused with a fiery dynamism.
When Shahzada Ghulam Ali’s speech ended, all of Jallianwala Bagh was alight with applause and slogans. Ghulam Ali’s face glowed with emotion. When I went up to the stage and pressed his hand in congratulation, I could feel it shaking. He seemed breathless. Besides the passion in his eyes, I thought I also saw a kind of hunger. He seemed to be searching for someone. And then suddenly, he separated his hand from mine and walked in the directio
n of a jasmine bush. A girl stood there, dressed in a spotless khadi sari.
The next day, I heard that Shahzada Ghulam Ali was in the grip of a new love. It was the girl I had seen standing deferentially near the jasmine bush. And his love was not unreturned; Nigar was just as captivated by him. As apparent from the name, Nigar was a Muslim girl, and an orphan. She was a nurse at the women’s hospital and perhaps the first Muslim girl to step out of purdah to join the Congress’ movement.
Her khadi dress, her participation in the Congress’ activities and her work at the hospital had worn down Nigar’s Islamic rigidity—that particular severity one finds in all Muslim girls—softening her slightly.
She was not beautiful, but a singular specimen of womanhood. The combination of humility and selflessness that characterises dutiful Hindu women, making them worthy of worship, was blended lightly into Nigar, producing a colour in her that lifted the soul. Though at the time it did not occur to me, as I write now, and think of Nigar, I feel that she was like a beguiling compound of Muslim prayer and Hindu ritual.
Nigar worshipped Shahzada Ghulam Ali and he, too, was devoted to her. When I spoke to him about her, I discovered that they had met during the Congress’ movement. And within a few days of their first meeting, they had sworn love to one another.
Ghulam Ali intended to make Nigar his wife before he went to jail. I can’t remember what his reasons were, as he could just as easily have married her when he returned from jail. In those days, no one went for very long: three months at the minimum and a year at the outside; some were released after no more than fifteen to twenty days so that room could be made for new prisoners. But he’d expressed this intention to Nigar and she was absolutely ready. All that was left to be done was to obtain Babaji’s blessings.
Babaji, as you might know, was an important figure. At the time, he was staying a little outside the city, at the luxurious house of the millionaire Lala Hari Ram Siraf. He spent most of his time at the ashram he’d built in a nearby village, but when in Amritsar, he only stayed at Lala Hari Ram’s house. With his arrival, the house became a place of pilgrimage for his followers. All day a stream of devotees flowed through it. At the end of the day, he would sit outside the house, on a raised platform under a cluster of mango trees, and meet people and receive donations for his ashram. Once he’d listened to a few minutes of devotional singing, he’d bring the audience to an end.
Babaji was a pious, compassionate, learned man and for this reason Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and untouchables alike became his followers, considering him their spiritual leader.
He showed no interest in politics, but it was an open secret that every political movement in Punjab began and ended at his ashram.
In the eyes of the government, he was a problem with no solution, a political enigma that its mightiest intellectuals couldn’t crack. A faint smile from his thin lips was interpreted in a thousand different ways. And Babaji would unveil yet another meaning, leaving a mesmerised public still more mesmerised.
The ongoing civil disobedience movement in Amritsar, which was rapidly sending people to prison, was the work of Babaji’s ashram. Every evening, in his open meetings, he would issue a small statement from his toothless mouth regarding the freedom movement in Punjab and the government’s draconian policies. The most important leaders would cling to his words as though they were sacred amulets.
People swore that his eyes possessed a magnetic power; that there was a kind of magic in his voice; and then the cool of that smiling mind, which the filthiest insult and the most poisonous abuse could not, for even a fraction of a moment, perturb! It was this that was the cause of so much distress to his opponents.
Babaji had held several demonstrations in Amritsar. But I, for some reason, despite having seen all the other leaders, had never laid eyes on him, not even from a distance. And so, when Ghulam Ali spoke to me of going to see him to request his permission to marry, I asked to be taken along as well. The following day, Ghulam Ali organised a horse carriage and we set out early for Lala Hari Ram luxurious house.
Babaji, having completed his ablutions and morning prayers, was listening to a beautiful panditani singing patriotic songs. He sat on a fig leaf mat spread out over a floor of sugar white tiles. A bolster lay near him, but he didn’t use it for support.
Except for the mat on which Babaji sat, there was no furniture in the room. From one edge of it to the other, the white tiles gleamed. Their gleam seemed to accentuate the panditani’s beauty, with her faintly onion pink cheeks and her patriotic songs.
Babaji would have been older than seventy, but his body (he only wore a saffron-coloured loincloth) was free of wrinkles. There was a glow to his skin. I later found out that every morning before bathing, he had olive oil rubbed into his body. He glanced briefly at Shahzada Ghulam Ali, then looked at me as well and, responding to our greeting with a smile, gestured to us to sit down.
Looking back, I find the scene not only interesting, but worthy of close attention. Sitting before me in an ascetic’s asana on a fig leaf mat was an old, half naked man. His posture, his bald head, his half open eyes, his dark, soft body, his face’s every feature, emanated resolve. He seemed to know that the mightiest earthquake could not unseat him from the pedestal on which the world had placed him. Some distance from him, a newly blossomed flower of the Kashmir valley bowed reverentially. She bowed both out of respect for being in the presence of this elderly man, and because she was moved by her own patriotic song. Her extreme youth seemed to want to break out of the rough white sari she wore, and to sing not just patriotic songs, but songs of her youth which, apart from revering this elderly man, might also have liked to honour some young, vigorous figure who’d grab her soft wrist and take her headlong into the roaring bonfire of life. A silent contest seemed to arise between the girl’s onion pink cheeks, dark, lively eyes and storm-filled breasts, concealed in a rough khadi blouse, and the old ascetic’s robust conviction and stony satisfaction. It seemed to say, ‘Come, either unseat me from this place where I sit now and pull me down, or take me still higher.’
The three of us, Shahzada Ghulam Ali, Nigar and I, went to one side and sat down. I was struck dumb. Babaji’s presence as well as the panditani’s unstained beauty were very affecting. Even the floor’s gleaming tiles transfixed me. I found myself thinking, even if she allows me to do nothing else, I want to kiss her eyes. The image sent a shiver through my body. My mind jumped immediately to thoughts of my maid, whom I’d recently developed something of a crush on. I felt for a moment like leaving them all there and rushing home; perhaps I’d be successful in taking her up to the bathroom without anyone seeing. But when my gaze returned to Babaji and the patriotic song’s passion-filled lyrics rang in my ears, I felt a different kind of frisson go through my body. I thought, if only I could get my hands on a pistol, I’d go down to Civil Lines and make a small start by gunning down the English.
Next to me sat Nigar and Ghulam Ali, two people in love. It had been unconsummated for too long and now, perhaps a little tired, they wished for it to swiftly reveal its colours with their becoming one. And this was what they had really come to ask Babaji, their spiritual leader, permission for. In that moment, apart from the patriotic song, the beautiful, but yet unheard words of their own life song were ringing in their ears.
The song finished. Babaji blessed the panditani with great tenderness. Smiling, he turned to Nigar and Ghulam Ali, looking briefly at me as well.
Ghulam Ali was about to introduce himself, but Babaji had an excellent memory. He said immediately in his sweet voice, ‘Shahzada, you haven’t been arrested yet?’
Ghulam Ali folded his hands and said, ‘Sir, no.’
Babaji took out a single pencil from the pen holder and began to play with it. ‘But I was under the impression,’ he said, ‘that you had already been arrested.’
Ghulam Ali didn’t understand his meaning. Babaji turned to the panditani, and pointing to Nigar, said, ‘Nigar has arrested our Shahzada
.’
Nigar reddened; Ghulam Ali’s mouth fell open with surprise; the panditani’s onion pink cheeks acquired a serene glow. She looked at Nigar and Ghulam Ali as if to say, ‘This is very good news.’
Babaji once again turned towards the panditani. ‘These children have come to ask my permission to marry. And what of you, Kamal? When will you marry?’
So this panditani’s name was Kamal! Babaji’s sudden question made her start; her onion pink complexion turned red.
In a trembling voice, she replied, ‘But I am to go to your ashram.’
A faint sigh seemed wrapped up in these words, which Babaji’s quick mind took instant note of. He continued to look at her, and smiling in his ascetic’s way, addressed Ghulam Ali and Nigar, ‘So, the two of you have made your decision?’
‘Yes,’ they both replied in subdued voices.
Babaji looked at them with his fine eyes. ‘When men make decisions, they sometimes have to unmake them as well.’
Despite Babaji’s formidable presence, Ghulam Ali’s naive, fearless youth spoke. ‘This decision might, for some reason, have to be altered, but it won’t be unmade.’
Babaji closed his eyes, and in a lawyerly tone, asked, ‘Why?’
Ghulam Ali, surprisingly, was not the slightest bit perturbed. Perhaps this time, the purity of his love for Nigar spoke. ‘Babaji, take the decision we’ve made to free India. Now, perhaps Time will alter our plans, but the decision itself will stand.’
Babaji, I felt, didn’t think it apposite to argue the point. And so, he smiled. The meaning of this smile, like all his smiles, could be interpreted in completely different ways. And if Babaji were to have been asked what it meant, I’m certain he would have drawn out yet another interpretation, entirely different from ours.
But, anyway! This many layered smile widened on his thin lips, and turning to Nigar, Babaji said, ‘Nigar, you come to our ashram. Shahzada will in any case be arrested any day now.’
Manto Page 11