‘Do you think the terrorists had inside help?’ It’s the current obsession of the newspapers.
He shakes his head. ‘That’s just badmashes trying to stir up communalist feeling.’
I wonder how he can be so sure, given the intelligence failings for which the SIB must be partly responsible. The attendant pokes his head round the door.
‘Take the sahib to Records.’ Poel turns back to me. ‘Just to show you where they are. Come again at ten tomorrow and we’ll see what we can dig up.’
The Assistant Commissioner hasn’t mentioned the word ‘permission’. I want to jump across the desk and kiss him. He throws me a soulful look as I get up to leave.
‘It must have been very hard to lose your father so young.’
At the Records office, the desks are empty. I look round eagerly. Somewhere here, I’m sure, I’m going to find what I need. I make my way out of the building in a daze. Have I really just seen the second-in-command of the current antiterrorist operations in Mumbai? I’m so tired, maybe I’ve hallucinated it all. It’s hard to account for such helpfulness. Perhaps it’s another sign of the continuing prestige of the IP. Or the clout of a London University professorship. Surely it can’t be because I’m white? I call Rajeev to tell him the good news. He congratulates me on my persistence.
‘You’d have made a good detective, just like your father,’ he says hoarsely. ‘Listen, I’ve caught this wretched thing from my wife. I don’t think you’d better come this evening after all. Don’t know if it’s swine flu or what, but I feel like a pig.’ He manages a weak chortle. ‘Do you have enough to keep you busy for a couple of days? Haven’t had time to work on that lead.’
I’m more relieved than anything. All I can think of is getting my aching bones to bed. I reassure him I’ll have no problem passing the time at the SIB.
When I report to the old Special Branch building the following morning, Poel’s not there. He’s apparently been called away to a meeting of police chiefs in Nagpur. Afterwards, he’s going on Christmas leave. To my immense relief, however, he’s left instructions for me to be admitted to Records. The chief archivist, Mr Walawalkar, is charming, middle-aged, very dark, breath smelling of fried chicken. However, he doesn’t seem to recognise Shinde’s file numbers or know where the confidential weekly reports might be located. I’m taken aback.
‘Records system changed in late 1980s,’ he explains apologetically. ‘Reorganisation. Some older material moved to different parts of the building.’
Walawalkar takes my list and promises to begin searching. Meanwhile, he suggests that the ‘Indian National Congress’ holdings might provide an overview of the contexts out of which the Parallel Government mobilisation emerged. It may even contain some of the material I’m after. He parks me at a desk in an annexe to the large room he works in. It has its own side door onto the outside corridor, past which uniformed personnel scurry. As I finish the cup of tea Mr Walawalkar offers, an attendant arrives, struggling with armfuls of dark-blue folders from the 1940s.
They have a strange odour, both acid and musty. Even more curious is the miscellany of documents they contain: crude cyclostyled anti-British cartoons, intercepted letters, Government Orders, abstracts of secret intelligence, telegrams between ‘Crimbo’ and ‘Peeler’. CID and the ordinary police, presumably? I begin working my way through, page by disintegrating page, trying not to damage them further. Within an hour, I strike gold. Here’s a document signed by Bill, reporting on two nationalists he’s taken in for questioning in Nasik. It gives his rank as assistant district superintendent of police, and is dated 7 August 1943. There are no details about the outcome of the investigations. Similar documents follow at intervals, his signature unformed compared with the one I remember.
Slowly, out of the seemingly random mass of material, I start to build a profile of Bill’s activities in the period before he went to Satara. He certainly had his hands full. On one occasion, he raids a photography shop suspected of supplying chemicals to nationalists to make crude explosives. Another time, he reports defusing a Mills bomb rigged up to a railway bridge. I remember the scars on Bill’s legs, and begin to understand how easy it might have been to come by them in the course of dealing with an armed insurgency. It must have taken some nerve to approach this sort of device and neutralise it, doubtless without proper tools or today’s protective clothing. Less dramatically, he visits schools to warn against the blandishments of ‘extremists’. He investigates anonymous tip-offs about the political sympathies of government employees, most of which, to his evident satisfaction, turn out to be malicious. He seeks to discover who pasted up nationalist flyers and where they were printed. He searches bookshops for proscribed publications, and enforces cinema censorship regulations relating to the reporting of the war. He even visits US army units in nearby Deolali Camp, to ask them not to send home photos of the base in case they fall into the wrong hands.
The evidence suggests that Bill was very much a cog in the imperial machine during a particularly repressive phase of its history, as the British struggled to contain the twin threats represented by the Japanese land advance towards India and the surging tide of Indian disaffection. Several things in the folders strike me about the nature of the nationalist agitation. The first is how controversial violence was considered to be, as a mode of resistance to the Raj. I come across the very last message from the Indian National Congress executive before it was arrested and detained en masse in August 1942. The directions are unambiguous: ‘Every man is at liberty to do by non-violent way, any act that will disturb the Government work completely. Make it impossible for the British to rule by observing general strikes and by any other non-violent means possible … Do or die.’ It’s signed by Gandhi, the ink surprisingly fresh-looking. Congress sympathisers reiterate the thrust of these instructions, even as armed resistance begins to spread. One activist’s letter, intercepted at the height of the disturbances in 1944, insists that ‘it cannot be said that such acts of violence and sabotage … have the sanction either of Gandhi or the Congress … People should non-violently agitate against repression.’ If what Rajeev hinted about the methods used by the Parallel Government is true, it’s little surprise that the Mahatma denounced the movement as a betrayal of his principles. From what I had time to read, this is an issue which Shinde seems to have skated over.
The Parallel Government aside, not everyone toed the official Congress line. Letters intercepted by Special Branch often equate Britain with Hitler’s Germany and call for armed rebellion, even total war, against foreign rule. There are frequent reports of sabotage; and evidence of occasional direct attacks on British personnel, notably a bomb planted in a Poona cinema which killed a number of soldiers. As one might perhaps expect, the authorities describe as ‘terrorists’ all those seeking to resist their rule by such means. Perhaps more surprisingly to a modern eye, the term ‘terrorist’ is sometimes used as a badge of honour by nationalists themselves. Here’s a cyclostyle of May 1943 lamenting the death in a police raid of one Comrade Kotwal, described as ‘this brilliant terrorist … the immortal martyr of Maharashtra’.
Above all I’m struck by how vulnerable the Raj seemed to its supporters, especially after the fall of supposedly impregnable ‘Fortress Singapore’ to the Japanese in late 1941. There’s a recurrent note of panic in many of the letters opened by the censors after that event. A Hungarian Jew, recently escaped from Europe, complains that he’s escaped the frying pan only to fall into the fire of civil disorder in Bombay. In September 1942, a Russian in Goa writes to his brother: ‘One cannot help thinking that the world will be organized by Hitler … if he succeeds in breaking through in the Caucasus, in 2–3 months he will reach India and join the Japanese.’ Foreign nationals, British citizens and Indians alike, evidently believed at various times that the Japanese had already entered India through Assam, even that Bombay had been bombarded from the sea. Air-raid precautions were hastily improvised, and lines of retreat to the hill statio
ns planned in detail. The government was sufficiently concerned about the Province’s porous coastline to set up watchtowers along the entire littoral, from Goa to Sindh, and introduced a system of licences for fishing-craft.
A bass note sounds through the authorities’ response to such developments – fear of a repeat of the great Indian ‘Mutiny’ of 1857, which for a time threatened to bring British rule to an end. In one report, they are exercised to catch the author of a message to an Indian soldier overseas, which confidently predicts that ‘on the 13 June, 1943, all of the Collectors [chief district administrators], wherever they are in India, will be killed.’ In Satara, the situation was growing grave. A magistrate writes in September 1942 that ‘the lives of the Government officials and property are in imminent danger … and public safety is in general danger.’ Things must have got much worse by the time Bill was posted there, more than a year later. I wonder if he was prey to such anxieties, and whether they influenced the way that Shinde alleges he behaved in villages like Chafal.
By the end of my first day’s digging, I’ve amassed three pages of useful notes, but found nothing on Bill’s actual dealings with the Parallel Government. Indeed there’s been surprisingly little reference altogether to the movement. And although I’ve come across excerpts from some police officers’ confidential weekly reports, there’s no sign of my father’s, even from the period when he officiated as DSP in Nasik, during his superior’s absence on leave. Thinking about it overnight, I decide to change tack. The following morning I consult Walawalkar, who now belatedly explains how the British organised their records. I ask to see the list. The headings include ‘Foreigners’, ‘Communal Troubles’, ‘Special Crimes’, ‘Native States’ and – the word leaps out – ‘Terrorism’. I suddenly intuit why the Parallel Government is barely mentioned in the Congress files. The Raj doubtless drew a distinction between ‘legitimate’ political opposition and organisations like the PG – or the Hoors of Sindh.
I ask for everything under ‘Terrorism’, starting in 1941, the year Bill graduated from the Police Training School, up to 1945, when he left Satara. Walawalkar looks uncertain. He says they may take time to locate, because they were moved to a different part of the building during the ‘reorganisation’ he mentioned yesterday. In the meantime, he wonders, would I like to look at anything else? Remembering Lindsay Padden-Row’s correspondence about the internment camp at Satara, I decide to examine ‘Foreigners’, the files for which arrive quickly. They seem primarily concerned with spies and fifth columnists. To my surprise, however, they yield useful material, with reports both made to and by Bill. I also sometimes catch a heartening glimpse of his personality through the official-speak.
Here’s one example; ironically, it concerns Bill being hauled before his own superior in Nasik. He’s been at a dinner attended by a Frenchwoman, identified only as Madame Agnes; she describes the occasion in a letter, pounced on by the censors. According to her account, at one point during the evening she complains to Bill that the bread tastes dreadful. He takes a bite, makes a face and advises her against eating any more. When asked why, he says it’s probably poisoned. While I can immediately visualise the puckish mock-solemn expression which so often accompanied his jokes, Madame Agnes takes him seriously: ‘He is the Asst Supt of Police, so he should know … funny thing, though, I’ve had tummy trouble for four days.’ The censors demand that both Bill and Mme Agnes be formally reprimanded by the DSP for spreading demoralising rumours, prejudicial to the war effort. According to his superior’s minutes, Bill insists it was, indeed, simply a joke – after all, he’d swallowed his mouthful in front of her. The DSP decides to give the Frenchwoman a mild warning and a brief introduction to the vagaries of English humour.
A second nugget which brings Bill vividly to life comes in another intercepted letter: ‘The turkeys travelled down very well with the exception of one hen bird which had a swollen and lame right leg … the ducks seemed in perfect condition except one which had a very husky throat and is also being treated.’ Again, I can easily visualise Bill’s struggle to keep a straight face as he comments: ‘Although I am no ornithologist, mention of a duck suffering from a husky throat sounds somewhat peculiar and indicates the use of some sort of code in the letter.’ He decides to investigate the writer, though the outcome isn’t recorded anywhere that I can see.
Bill on horseback
When I’ve finished flicking through ‘Foreigners’, I return to Walawalkar’s desk. ‘Very useful, thank you. Any news about the “Terrorism” holdings?’
He looks embarrassed. ‘Missing, only.’
It takes a moment to register. ‘Surely not the whole run?’
‘Already not here when I arrived in 2004.’
‘But Shinde must have seen them,’ I splutter, ‘you’ve got his list. Where have they been moved?’
‘I don’t know, sir. Sorry.’ He returns my list.
I’m thrown. Instinct tells me those files would be much the best place to look for Bill’s reports and for the British view of the Parallel Government and its methods. They must be here, in some dark corner of this cavernous building, tied up in musty mailbags to ‘protect’ them.
‘I will make more inquiries. But meanwhile, you can maybe find more of the material you want under other headings? What about “Special Crimes”? I can have them ready for you after lunch.’
When I return in the early afternoon, Walawalkar’s station is empty. However, a pile of files is waiting at my desk. While waiting for my friendly archivist to reappear, a man I haven’t seen before passes by. I’m instinctively wary. He’s about thirty, with a feeble moustache and shifty eyes. His formal white shirt, with black lacework patterning, gives him the air of a Mexican country-and-western singer. From time to time he passes through the annexe, gazing suspiciously about. Finally, he stops and asks what I’m doing. When I tell him I’m researching the Parallel Government, his face lights up.
‘A glorious chapter of our history,’ he enthuses.
I feel we’ve broken the ice, and regret judging him so hastily. Towards the end of the afternoon, however, he approaches once again.
‘Who has given you permission to work here?’
I’m startled. ‘Assistant Commissioner Poel.’
It’s his turn to look surprised. ‘When?’
‘A couple of days ago.’
‘He is not here today.’
‘I know. He’s in Nagpur. He didn’t say I can only work here while he’s in the building.’
The man’s nonplussed for a moment. ‘I cannot check your story.’
‘What about asking Mr Walawalkar?’
‘He leaves early on Friday. Then he is on holidays.’
Why on earth didn’t Walawalkar mention his plans?
‘I’m in charge in the interim.’
Oh no. I suspect no one’s looking for the ‘Terrorism’ files now. My interrogator disappears, returning a short while later with a thick orange file. Opening it, he shows me various letters addressed to the Assistant Chief Secretary, Home Department, copied to the SIB, from researchers requesting access to the old Special Branch archives. ‘Where is yours?’
‘I went to Mantrale. They told me to come here and ask,’ I lie.
‘Who told you?’
‘I didn’t get his name. On the seventh floor, I think.’
‘Where is the rule? Show me the rule.’
I stare at him, perplexed. ‘Which rule?’
‘That says you can enter without permission.’
I wonder if he’s related to the obstructive man at the Home Department. ‘Why not phone Mr Poel?’
The man looks outraged at the suggestion.
‘Give me his number, I’ll call him,’ I backtrack placatingly.
‘Mobile is confidential,’ my tormentor says sternly. ‘Without written permission, no notes are to be taken away.’
I’m flabbergasted. Who knows when Poel will be back? I’m in danger of wasting two full days of research. E
xasperation generates my scheme.
‘OK, whatever you say. The attendant’s supposed to be bringing up “Strikes and Labour Unrest” before closing time. Can you call the stacks and tell him not to bother? I’ll get my notes in order for you.’
He can’t resist the invitation to order someone else around. As soon as I hear him on the internal phone next door, I arrange some of my jottings from Shinde in a neat pile on my desk. I can always go back to the University library and retrieve the information I need. I hastily gather the notes I’ve taken here in the SIB and stick them in my bag. Then I scarper out the side door. Haring down the staircase, I half expect to hear police whistles. But I reach the gate, where I’m waved through by the affable constable, who seems disappointed I won’t be lingering for our usual chat about London. Out on the street, I congratulate myself on my quick thinking.
Then I wonder if I’ve been so clever after all. Perhaps I’ve made trouble for Poel, and he won’t let me back in as a consequence.
Returning to the hotel, I feel increasingly deflated. Fascinating though my researches have been, I haven’t made any progress in addressing the accusations against Bill. Nor have I found any evidence about his time in Sindh. Indeed, I’ve seen nothing which might account for the blank period in his History of Services record. The disappearance of the ‘Terrorism’ files is very disheartening, although it may explain why Professor Bhosle has not been able to find Bill’s secret Memorandum. Until Poel gets back, there’s no possibility of returning to the SIB. Given that I’ve largely drawn blanks at Elphinstone, Mantrale and Police HQ in turn, I seem to be completely stuck. I need to consult Rajeev.
The following morning I catch a cab to the address he’s given me, and find myself outside a once-lovely Art Deco building off a tree-lined avenue close to railway tracks. Trains jangle in and out of Churchgate, their passengers crammed precariously on the carriage steps. My host comes out when I pull his bell, looking a little pale. Floor tiles lead in intricate abstract patterns along the communal corridor, which smells of stale cooking oil, towards a beautiful brass and hardwood lift. Rajeev opens the door of his apartment and shows me in to what he calls his day room, a study with a single, bolster-strewn bed, waist-high stacks of yellowed newspapers, haphazard bookcases, a couple of upright chairs at a desk. Incongruously, Elvis blares from something I haven’t seen for years: an enormous chrome-effect ghetto blaster. Rajeev catches my startled look.
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