The Setting Sun

by Bart Moore-Gilbert

  ‘What was that all about?’

  ‘She’s possessed by Lord Rama. Don’t worry,’ Briha smiles. ‘We should go, I have my class. Will you say a few words?’

  Judging by the similar request at Satara police station, such talks are perhaps expected of ‘distinguished’ visitors.

  His classroom’s dilapidated, with a broken window looking onto the Mahalaxmi temple and a torn cloth ceiling. Boys and girls sit separately, and the latter giggle as they stand to greet us. Briha explains who I am and, to my discomfiture, announces that I’m going to discourse on the importance of English in today’s globalised world. Mindful of Avanish’s complaints about the language dilemma for local scholars and writers, I rehearse Chinua Achebe’s ideas about English being a world language which has to submit to many local usages. This sparks animated discussion. One student asks if I approve of Daniel Craig’s recent Bond film being subtitled in Standard English for local television. That makes me laugh. Another wonders what I think of Indian English as a medium for literature. Time passes quickly, most of the conversation led by the girls. The boys look uncomfortable when Briha asks them anything until, just as the bell rings, one raises his hand. He has short centre-parted hair, a face graped with acne and a pained, intense expression.

  ‘Sir, you are interested in European history, also?’

  I nod. He reads from his exercise book.

  ‘Did you know Napoleon was born in 1760, Hitler in 1899. The difference is 129 years.’

  I shrug.

  ‘Napoleon came to power in 1804, Hitler in 1933. The difference is 129 years. Napoleon occupied Vienna in 1809, Hitler in 1938.’ I’m beginning to get the gist. ‘Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, Hitler in 1941. Napoleon was defeated in 1816, Hitler in 1945.’

  His mates clap enthusiastically and I join in. Even though I’ve spotted mistakes, I don’t want to spoil the fun.

  Briha, Vilas and I jump in an auto-rickshaw after the class. It’s a tight fit with three in the back and the motor protests tinnily. As we weave in and out of the traffic, I wonder whether I’ve misjudged Indian drivers. Perhaps, despite the statistics, they’re the best in the world, rather than the worst. Maybe the endless horns function like bats’ radar, enabling drivers to judge clearances to the millimetre. Soon we’re pulling up before a set of barracks in the same style as those in Satara. In the centre of the old parade ground women are making bricks, pungent-smelling patties mixed from piles cement, cow dung and sugarcane pith.

  ‘The revolt was instigated by the Rajah’s brother, Chimasaheb, and it began right here on the night of 31 July 1857, when the 27th Native Infantry revolted.’

  Step by step, Vilas takes us through the main stages of the uprising and the sites associated with them. Here’s a former mission building, where some British officers escaped to, now government printing presses.

  ‘Four fled down the Ratnagiri road, where they were eventually cut down.’

  Now to the former Residency, a noble building running down to a river, where other officers and loyal troops retreated. From here a runner was dispatched through enemy lines to Satara to raise the alarm.

  ‘It was like the siege at Lucknow, though not so long. Still, it hung in the balance until Colonel Jacob’s relieving force arrived, a good week later.’

  ‘What happened then?’

  We’re outside a rectangular stone enclosure with a small temple at the far end.

  ‘The most determined rebels retreated here, the stables in those days. Inch by inch they were driven inside the temple, then up into the stupa. Lieutenant Carr’s men killed them one by one. Nobody surrendered.’

  I can almost see the red tunics, hear the musket-shots and the cries of the wounded. How much of the damage to the fabric dates from those days, and what do the current inhabitants know of the events? Each of the former horse-stalls now houses a whole family of squatters, according to Vilas; the communal yard a colourful jam of handcarts, bicycles, curious children, silky-haired goats, pots of herbs. Bright bouquets are drawn in chalk on every threshold. For good luck, Briha explains.

  Then it’s off to broad Shalini Lake, where we stop beside an ancient tree with thick branches. The base has been bricked round, distinguishing it from its neighbours. Pedalos idle on the water and on the far shore a funfair wheel turns slowly, shrieks carrying faintly to us. Over there’s a huge building with a Victorian, municipal air and a Big Ben clock, which I’m informed is one of the erstwhile ‘new’ palaces, now a luxury hotel. Vilas pats the trunk we’re standing beside.

  ‘This was the hanging tree. All through the second half of August 1857, rebel sepoys and those who allegedly helped them were hanged in batches. They were left for the crows to pick their flesh off.’

  I have an awful vision of dozens of tar-black silhouettes against the blinding sky, hands tied behind their backs, rotating slowly in the putrid breeze.

  ‘What about the leaders?’

  ‘You’ll see.’

  We jump into the auto-rickshaw and end up back at the college. But instead of going in, Vilas leads the way into the grand square where preparations for the wrestler’s wedding continue apace. We stop opposite a huge gate in the old palace walls.

  ‘Everyone above the rank of private was brought here. The British lined their artillery up, facing that opening. The whole town was forcibly assembled to watch the mutineers tied to the mouths of the cannons. Then they were blown away. According to eyewitnesses, the torsoes vaporised, but arms, legs and heads fell into the crowds.’

  The public staging of these punishments seems to me as barbaric as the methods themselves. More what you’d expect from the medieval period, than from a colonial administration which was supposed to be in India to spread the humane ideals of the Enlightenment. Yet public punishment was a technique used more recently by Bill and the Parallel Government, too, to inspire fear and to cow dissenters.

  ‘What about Chimasaheb?’

  ‘Exiled. But because his brother immediately disowned him, Kolhapur wasn’t taken over.’

  ‘How many did the British lose?’

  ‘One hundred and eleven. More than fifteen hundred rebels were killed or executed.’

  Only a little less disproportionate than the figures coming in from Gaza. Chastening. Imperialism in the raw. Was it only because the Indian army was so tied up by the war that the British didn’t unleash this sort of terror on Satara during the 1940s, as they were soon to do in Malaya, Kenya and Cyprus? My speculations are interrupted when Vilas turns to me.

  ‘Will you talk now to our Socrates Society?’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Our weekly college debate. Last one this year, so there’ll be a good turnout. It’s designed to help them understand issues of the day and practise spoken English. Build confidence in public speaking.’

  Although I’m tired, it seems churlish to refuse, especially since Vilas has taken such trouble over our tour. Briha’s caramel eyes beseech.

  ‘OK. What’s the topic?’

  ‘Terrorism.’

  My heart sinks. ‘How long?’

  ‘Ten minutes. There’ll be other speakers.’

  Over tea, I frantically try to think of what to say. Maharashtra has witnessed not only the recent terror attacks in Mumbai but, earlier in the year, the Malegaon bomb outrages, directed at Muslims. Dangerous ground. I could discuss the attempted repression of the Parallel Government. Or the methods of Bill’s opponents, which Bhosle’s thesis described as designed ‘to inspire terror in the hearts of the rulers’. All day I’ve been having flashbacks to Chafal. I’m not ready to discuss such things just yet. Then there’s Modak’s account in his memoir of the terrible behaviour of the Indian security forces in Kashmir? Equally risky in the present climate. My mind churns, unable to find the right focus.

  Here we are in the assembly hall and I’m still flailing. It looks like the entire college is crammed noisily into pews facing the platform, on which the chairman and several teachers are alread
y seated. Once again boys and girls are segregated, the latter at the front, giggling and smiling. I’m given an inflated introduction, after which a couple of staff have their say. It’s shocking. The first speaker demands Pakistan be ‘wiped off the map’. The second calls more euphemistically ‘for the problem of Pakistan to be sorted out once and for all.’ However he then goes on to decry the elaborate and costly security precautions in place for politicians and celebrities, compared with the vulnerability of the general public. Both polemics are enthusiastically received, and there’s a buzz of anticipation when I stand up to speak.

  The thought suddenly occurs. What about Colonel Jacob’s behaviour in Kolhapur? That was surely state terrorism, designed to cow the civilian population by theatrically staged displays of retribution. But I begin by discussing the slipperiness of the term ‘terrorism’, citing the contradictory ways it was used in the SIB archives. I then propose that many nations suffer from terrorism today. Even Pakistan. I remind my listeners of the assassination of Benazir Bhutto and the bombing of the Marriott hotel in Islamabad in 2007. Instinct tells me I’m rapidly losing sympathy. So I switch to Colonel Jacob and the ‘Mutiny’, after all and from there, increasingly struggling to maintain a coherent thread, to London and the July 2005 bombings. I speculate about potential lessons from that episode, suggesting that one must be as tough on the causes of terrorism as on terrorism itself. I jump to the IRA, explaining that through the 1970s, there were bombings on the British mainland. Things got worse under Thatcher, who refused point-blank to talk to ‘terrorists’. Only when Major and Blair decided to negotiate did the ‘Troubles’ end, even if the ensuing peace has been uneasy. The first step, I conclude, is to stop calling people you don’t like terrorists, recognise them as political actors and then let politics do its business. If peace can succeed centuries of occupation and rebellion in Ireland, the same might be true in other trouble spots.

  The applause is thin and lukewarm. Then it’s the students’ turn. Some are more nuanced than their teachers, but the mood of anger so soon after Mumbai is palpable. The debate over, teachers approach one by one to remonstrate.

  ‘You can’t call what Jacob did terrorism. It wasn’t random violence against civilians. There were military rules which clearly laid out penalties for mutiny.’

  ‘Did they include mass executions without due process, in front of civilians?’ I counter, startled that locals should want to defend Jacob.

  ‘State actors cannot be terrorists,’ another objects.

  ‘Not even when they’re utterly careless about civilian life?’

  A woman lecturer joins in shrilly. ‘Your programme for Pakistan is not correct, sir. You cannot talk to madmen. No agreement would be credible.’

  ‘What are the consequences of becoming ever more entrenched?’

  ‘Mrs Thatcher was right. We have to be strong,’ another interposes. ‘No surrender to terrorists.’

  ‘How do you distinguish between terrorists and freedom fighters?’

  It’s a relief when four girls from Briha’s class come forward. Each offers me an identical deep purple rose.

  ‘Thank you for coming to visit,’ they smile.

  I’m deeply touched.

  Back in the hotel, I try Bhosle’s number. It rings interminably. I then book the car for tomorrow’s trip, feeling increasingly dispirited by my limp performance in the debate. With advance warning, I could have spoken coherently on any number of subjects for the time allotted. Why can’t state actors be terrorist? What about the merciless ongoing assault on Gaza? Perhaps, after all, I should have had the courage to address the way Bill and his colleagues undermined their cause by resorting to their opponents’ tactics. Or how the contemporary West’s similarly tainted by recourse to extraordinary rendition, the franchising of torture to client states, the widespread abuse and killing of civilians during its military adventures in the Muslim world. Waterboarding, sensory deprivation, the postmodern analogues of thumbscrews and the rack. Then there’s the multi-pronged assault on our own civil liberties in the wake of the ‘war on terror’, detention without trial, electronic surveillance, the proposals for secret courts, and so on. The more I think about it, the more such developments seem to have parallels with the dreadful Defence of India Rules imposed on wartime India in the name of protecting public ‘security’.

  Above all, the failure to address the legitimate demands of moderates like Gandhi is what gave the Parallel Government its head and, to my mind, legitimacy – though this isn’t to excuse the excesses it was sometimes prone to. The same strategic mistake was made in the Amritsar massacre in the Punjab, the event in 1919 in which troops fired on a civilian protest, killing many hundreds. That, more than anything else, turned ordinary Indian opinion against the Raj and laid the foundations for its rapid demise. The British state seems to have learned little from such episodes in imperial history. The ‘Bloody Sunday’ shootings of peacefully protesting fellow-citizens by paratroopers in Derry in 1972 is a case in point. It led to a fourfold increase in the IRA within a matter of weeks, making a hitherto marginal organisation a central player in the latest phase of the ‘Troubles,’ which were thereby prolonged for three more bloody decades.

  The West more broadly seems to have inherited this blindspot. For example, its refusal to support the reasonable demands of the secular PLO against unending Israeli occupation and the continuing seizure of Palestinian land since 1967 led directly to the rise of militant Hamas, democratically elected by a populace increasingly disillusioned at the impotence (and corruption) of the PLO – and hence to the current catastrophe in Gaza. But if violent repression and ‘terrorism’ are two sides of the same coin, and neither side escapes the mirroring effect of their close association, it’s not a question of chicken and egg. In India and Ireland, Kashmir and Palestine, repression clearly came first. I think back to Yeravda jail and Gandhi’s message of non-violence. Is his philosophy remotely tenable in a world of neo-cons and al-Qaeda?

  Unable to find answers, I turn my attention to what reception I’m likely to get from the two nationalist leaders tomorrow. This is probably the last chance to gather material from people who knew Bill, and I need to think carefully about what to ask. Even though it’s New Year’s Eve, I’m too tired to think about going out. Better to sort out my questions and catch up on my sleep. I’ve only just got into bed when my mobile rings.

  ‘Rajeev here. How’s the intrepid traveller? Just wanted to wish you Happy New Year.’

  ‘Great to hear you, Rajeev,’ I reply, though I’d been praying it’d be Bhosle. ‘Feels like weeks.’ I fill him in briefly on what’s been happening since we last spoke. ‘Any news of Poel?’

  ‘Any day now.’

  ‘What are you doing this evening? Anything special?’

  ‘At my age? I’m having a quiet evening in with the King.’

  ‘I hope you’re wearing your blue suede shoes.’

  He laughs. ‘By the way, I’ve been digging around again. Seems your father took a four-month leave from India in 1946.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ I wonder why.

  ‘And I came up with his final transfer papers. Made a copy for you. In February 1947 he was posted from Ahmedabad to Ratnagiri. He stayed there until he left India, the exact day of Independence.’

  ‘Heavens, Rajeev, how did you manage that?’

  ‘Contacts,’ he chuckles.

  So Kiron Modak was right after all. I calculate rapidly. ‘Where’s Ratnagiri in relation to Kolhapur?’

  ‘A few hours north-west by bus. From there you can catch a train back to Mumbai.’

  ‘Let’s see if Poel gets back to you. Still haven’t found any of my father’s confidential weekly reports.’

  ‘You’ve got time, haven’t you? There’s one last place we can look when you get back to Mumbai. I’ll push Poel as soon as I catch up with him. We go back a long way.’

  Bill in full uniform at my parents’ wedding reception in London, December 1947

&nbs
p; ‘Can’t thank you enough, Rajeev. You’re amazing.’

  ‘By the way, this long leave Gilbert took on half-pay, ex-India, in 1946. Is that when he married your mother?’

  ‘No. I have their wedding certificate. It was in December 1947. They only met after he left India.’ A whirlwind romance.

  ‘Maybe a device to cover his transfer to Sindh?’

  ‘No, the Hur rebellion was over in 1943. Before he went to Satara.’

  So what was he up to in those months? Every shaft of light thrown on Bill’s career in the subcontinent throws up another mystery. Like the Ramoshi in Bhosle’s thesis. What had he done that Bill felt compelled to shoot him?

  CHAPTER 12

  Respect Between Enemies

  We head north the following morning, back up the Pune-Bangaluru highway towards Kundal. First stop is G.D. Lad, former ‘field marshal’ of the Parallel Government. It’s a beautiful first day of the year. Overnight it rained just enough to cleanse the air of dust, and it’s fresh enough that we don’t need air-con. Innumerable rooks tumble down the wall of rinsed pale-blue sky. Briha’s smartly dressed in a cream shirt and black trousers. He’s in expansive mood, head nodding slightly precariously on his neck.

  ‘It is my son’s birthday today.’

  ‘You should have told me. We could have gone another time.’

  ‘No matter. We’re having his party this evening. I hope you’ll come as our dear guest of honour?’

  ‘As long as I don’t have to make a speech,’ I laugh. ‘How old is he?’