by Paul Scott
‘Yes, I see. You’ve been listening to all these rumours of ill-treatment. But where do such rumours come from except from men who joined us and have been recaptured like me but are hoping to suck up to the British with tales of tortures. I know nothing of such things. The only barbarity I have ever witnessed was in my old regiment in Kuala Lumpur when the officers’ mess cook was ordered by Colonel Barker to receive six strokes of the rattan for stealing rum and selling it in the bazaar. We were all made to assemble and watch.’
‘Under the pukka Indian Army Act such punishments are prescribed for menials. I am questioning you about punishments of combatant soldiers.’
‘And I’ve already answered. I know nothing of brutal punishments. In Rangoon I ordered such things as extra fatigues, confinement to barracks, forfeiture of pay. And in the field, extra guard duties or heavy pack drill. I am not a monster. I am not a barbarian.’
‘And you know nothing of this kind and worse kinds of violence in forcing men to join the INA?’
‘Nothing.’
‘You never had a case of desertion in your battalion?’
‘No.’
‘If you had, what would have happened if the man had been caught? Come. Think of me still as your prosecutor. What punishment did your INA prescribe for desertion, for instance in the face of the enemy, meaning in the face of the British and the Indian armies? Death?’
‘That would have been the maximum.’
‘In the eyes of the British who are not interested in INA acts or regulations, to execute such a sentence on an Indian soldier, even a traitorous Indian soldier, would amount to murder under the Indian Penal Code. You realize this? I am sorry to press you on the subject. Were such a sentence ever passed and executed, everyone concerned would be guilty at least of abetment to murder. You see how difficult things become when there is no political let alone legal recognition of the losing side by the winning side? I want to be absolutely sure there is no problem of this kind attaching to your case.’
‘I’ve told you, father. You can be sure.’
‘Because if there is any doubt, all my advice to you so far is valueless. You would have to work your case up on lines that would seek to establish the legality of what I have called Subhas Chandra Bose’s spurious constitutional framework. You would need the services of an expert on Constitutional and International Law. On full consideration, do you think after all you might require such services?’
‘All I know is that I’ve only told you the truth. What I understand of it. I am merely a professional soldier. I don’t follow all these technicalities.’
‘They are not just technicalities, Sayed. Never mind. Go back now and concentrate your mind on the situation that ended in your surrender in Manipur. But let me lead you a little. In court your counsel would not be allowed too much licence in that respect.’
He smiled, attempting to make Sayed smile too.
‘In Manipur,’ he went on, ‘you find yourself in a difficult, perhaps untenable military position. No supplies, no ammunition, no lines of communication. You are somewhere in the hills near Imphal. The Japanese are suddenly nowhere. The British and the Indian armies are uncomfortably close. Now – were there among your men any who said, Major Sahib, this is our chance. Now we can do what we really joined the INA to do – escape from prison-camp and return to duty at the earliest possible moment?’
Presently Sayed said, ‘Yes, there were some men who pretended to think like that.’
‘How did you deal with them?’
‘I tried to make them see what folly it was.’
‘Folly? Why folly?’
‘Folly to expect the British to swallow a story like that.’
‘Folly is not a good word. I suggest you do not use it. It would make it sound as if you were thinking what was wise and what was foolish and not of what your position really was – that you had all made a certain decision as prisoners-of-war, with a certain idea at its end, and here was the idea in ruins, with the Japanese being beaten back and not any longer looking likely to march on Delhi to hoist the Rising Sun in place of the Union Jack. Which meant that all of you were in ruins too, unless you abandoned whatever post the Japanese had left you to hold before leaving you in the lurch, abandoned it and retreated and ran back after the Japanese to share their defeat with them. Perhaps to fight another day. Perhaps not. It seems to me, Sayed, that the one thing your INA never took into account was what was to happen if the Japanese were defeated. Or were you so convinced of their superiority that the eventuality never occurred to you? Were you by any chance relying on the defection of the Indian Army, the moment they saw Indians marching shoulder to shoulder with the Japanese? Did you think the Indian Army would at once turn on its British officers and join with you and the Japanese to massacre the British Army?’
Sayed did not reply. But he got up and went towards the other pleader’s table. ‘Yes,’ Kasim said, misunderstanding. ‘Smoke if you want to. And then tell me how you tried to convince these men of yours of their folly. But I hope you were thinking not of folly but of dishonour.’
But Sayed had gone on past the table, hands behind back. For a moment he stood near the rail behind which when the court was in session the public sat. Then he came back and stood looking down at his father.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I asked them, “What folly is this? What mercy do you expect from the British or even from our own fellows who are commanded by them and dare not disobey? You will all be shot like dogs just as so many of our people have always been treated like dogs. Isn’t it better to die here?” Then one of them said, “Major Sahib, we do not care. To surrender is our only chance now of seeing our families again, so let the British and our own old comrades shoot us if they want to, it no more matters. We do not care either about the British or the Japanese. Staying here we shall all be killed anyway, and our women and children will starve, no one will see to them or bother about them and it will all be up with them.” Then another said, “Here we are only so many, but most of us are thinking like this, that we must risk being shot, because it is our only chance. You have only to ask the others. We are all thinking the same. That it is all finished with us!” ’
‘Please sit. I cannot speak to you while you are standing up.’
‘It’s easier for me to stand, father. So let me tell you. I sent these men away and assembled the others. There weren’t many of us left anyway. I said, Well what is the decision of the majority? Who is for surrendering and chancing being shot? One hand went up and then another until there were only a few hands not up. Including mine. Then I went away to be alone for a bit. Perhaps you would have preferred me to do what it was in my mind to do. Shoot myself. A very honourable solution. But what is the good to India of a dead Indian just now? And perhaps also I wished to see my family again, only it was not even that I was allowed to see my own mother before she died.’
‘Sayed –’
‘No. Let me speak please. You are talking about a world that exists only in a court of law and I am not. In the world as it is it is necessary to act sometimes according to the heart –’
‘I do not advise this, Sayed. It is pure emotional rhetoric. It will not get you anywhere.’
‘Will not get me anywhere? Where is this place I am supposed to be going? Where is all this supposed to be leading, this advice you are giving me? The truth is that after all you don’t intend to help me. You are giving me a lot of ideas about how to placate the British. Why should they be placated? What right have they to say what I shall do and what I shall not do?’
‘I am helping you in the only way I can. I must make it clear to you that I don’t intend to make political capital out of this. I cannot advise you to present your own case in a political framework. I do not intend to take that road. I advise you not to. I do not approve of what you have done. I do not approve of INA. I shall not identify myself with any committee set up for the defence nor shall I defend you in court, although to do so would be a very popular thing
in the country generally. On the other hand I shall not criticize you, nor the INA, to anyone, which is perhaps what Government has been hoping I would do. I do not intend to commit political suicide, although you will appreciate that the situation I find myself in does not augur well for my immediate political future.’
Kasim paused; went on before Sayed had a chance to speak: ‘If you plead guilty I will continue to help you. I will help to choose and to instruct your defence counsel, but in a wholly private and confidential manner. Everything I have been trying to put into your mind this morning as the proper way to conduct your case has been to this end: that you should plead guilty to waging war against the King, and then submit a reasoned statement setting out the considerations that led you to do so. Pleading guilty is the only way you can come out of court with any kind of personal integrity left.’
Sayed, still standing, had looked away, but now turned on Kasim. ‘Integrity? What else have you ever done, father, except wage war against the King? Hasn’t this been your whole life, to get rid of the British? What is the difference between you and me except that you went to prison now and again and I carried a gun?’
‘You have just explained the difference, Sayed. If you cannot see it, then it is pointless to discuss it any further. So yes, come, come. Let us finish. We are simply aggravating one another.’
He got up.
‘You are throwing everything away,’ Sayed said.
‘Not everything.’
‘No one will trust or respect you if you don’t stand up for us along with other political leaders.’
‘I hope it is not my fear of this that you have been relying on?’ He made to go, but stopped, unable to part with his son on such terms. ‘It is you who have thrown away everything, Sayed. The men who did not are the Indian soldiers and officers who are still in prison-camp, who resisted all these perhaps understandable and pardonable temptations and suffered infinitely greater hardship, and who will now be coming home. In a year or so, if you are not in prison, where will you be? For a time yes, you will all be heroes. But when there is no longer any reason to treat you as heroes, then you will be forgotten or if you are remembered at all it will be with mistrust, as men who broke their contracts, men who voluntarily took an oath of loyalty and then disregarded it, men who treated their commissions as mere scraps of paper to be used or thrown away as they thought fit. And if you do go to prison for this meanwhile, I beg of you do not try to console yourself with the thought that you and your father have both in your time suffered the same punishment for the same crime. It will not be so. The only contract I have ever made of this kind is with myself, to do what I could to obtain the independence and freedom and unity and strength of this country. Whenever in earlier days I defied the law it was in performance of that contract, and I defied it knowing full well the penalty and indeed inviting the penalty and proudly admitting that I had incurred it. The last time I went to prison was because I would not repudiate my membership of a party that Government lawfully suppressed. Unjustly but lawfully suppressed. It is true that at one time I was sworn in as a minister and it is true that I and all my colleagues resigned when we felt we could not any longer participate in an administration under the British. But a soldier cannot resign in wartime. When you became a soldier, Sayed, this fact should have been clearly in your mind as defining the difference between us. I did not interfere with your decision to become a soldier because I asked myself what kind of independent country will India be if we do not have a properly trained and experienced professional army to defend that independence. That the British allowed Indians to become officers I have always taken as a sign of their good faith in the matter of eventually bowing to our demands to rule ourselves. But that is by the way. What is not by the way is that now you can no longer be a soldier, you can no longer help your country. And this is what angers me. Your life so far has been wasted.’
Sayed stared at him.
‘It is not a country. It is two countries. Perhaps it is many countries, but primarily it is two. If I’m not wanted in one perhaps I shall be wanted in the other.’
‘Ah!’ Kasim exclaimed. And sat down. ‘So this also has happened to you. Then we are even more deeply divided.’
‘We’re only divided by your refusal to face facts, father, and by your reliance on this and that legal interpretation, also I begin to think by your reliance on the British to act as gentlemen. I no longer believe in such concepts. I have seen too much of life. It is no good relying on principles and no good relying on the British who themselves have no principles that can’t be trimmed to suit them. In any case, they are finished. They are no longer of importance and will drag us down with them if we aren’t careful. They are only interested in themselves and always have been. But now they are afraid of the Americans and the Russians and will try to get rid of India as quick as they can, both to curry favour with the USA and USSR and not to have any longer the responsibility. They will hand us over to Gandhi and Nehru and Patel – and then where will you be, father? How can you trust Congress as a whole? How can you imagine that just because you’ve been useful to them in the past you – a Muslim – will be allowed to remain useful when they have power? They will squeeze you out at the first convenient opportunity. Congress is a Hindu party whatever they pretend. They will exploit us as badly as the British have done, probably worse. There’s only one answer and that is to seize what we can for ourselves and run things our own way from there.’
Sayed leaned over the table.
‘When you say my military career is finished, I would agree with you. It would be finished if the British stay and finished if we merely substitute a Hindu for a British raj. It would be finished because I’m a Muslim and they hate us. Also they hate each other. A Hindu from UP hates a Hindu from Bengal and both hate a Hindu from the South. A Hindu raj would be a catastrophe. They have nothing to hold them together. They hate and envy us mostly because we have such a thing. We have Islam. It will be madness not to resist them. The only thing that matters in this world, father, is power. We must grasp our own. Surely it is true you have been thinking of this too? Please, do not be too proud? I do not want to see you become neglected and bitter in your old age.’
Kasim kept his attention on his son’s hands: good, square capable hands. No sign of a tremor. Nor perhaps of sensitivity. He kept his own clasped.
‘You are asking me to throw everything away and go over to the League?’
‘It wouldn’t be throwing anything away. Guzzy and Nita are very keen on this, I think. Their letters are full of hints. Jinnah would welcome you. Almost I imagine he is expecting it, because you have been so difficult for people to get hold of.’
‘And Ahmed? Is he keen?’
‘What does Ahmed know about anything? He is still a child.’
‘No,’ Kasim said. ‘He is not a child.’
‘Well, no, no, not in that way. A man with a reputation I gather.’
‘A reputation?’
‘For liking the things a man likes.’
‘Women? Drinking? This is so.’
‘He should be careful. It must worry you.’
Kasim did not reply. He noted the solicitous tone in his son’s voice. Which verged on condescension. Sayed added, ‘Perhaps he is like this because he feels himself to be without chance or opportunity.’
‘You mean he does not agree with the things I stand for?’
‘How can I say, father? He is a good boy at heart, I’m sure. I shall try to find out what he thinks, shall I?’
‘He does not think about much. Except these things you mentioned. And hawking.’
‘Hawking?’
‘He was always very keen on riding. Now he has trained a falcon. It is very difficult, you know. It demands much attention and concentration. Sleepless nights. All that sort of thing. But he is much attached to her. He goes out whenever he can.’
‘But that is good! A good manly sport. I am glad. I should not like him to become dissipated.’
Sayed placed one hand on his father’s coupled ones. Kasim did not look up. But he felt, as a physical pressure, the steady way his elder son watched him.
‘Perhaps we should say goodbye now, father. Thank you for coming to see me.’
‘It is you who have come the greater distance.’
‘That is my duty.’
Kasim stood up. Dutifully too, he held his arms out. They embraced. Speaking into his son’s shoulder he said, ‘Do not rely too much on this Colonel Merrick. He has known Ahmed for some time. He has told neither of you that he knew the other.’
‘He told me just before he brought you in, father. But don’t worry. I rely on no Englishman. He is of no importance either.’
‘They will be waiting for you outside, no doubt. No doubt you can see Ahmed alone in here also, but you had better go out now. It would offend me to see you in custody of any kind. By the time they bring you back in I shall be gone.’
‘You will write to me?’
Kasim nodded. He murmured: Allah be with you. Then released him and moved away. He heard his son’s firm, heavy footsteps; and in a while the opening and closing of a door. He looked round the empty court-room and, familiar though it was, as such rooms went, it seemed to him lacking in the quality that gave such rooms meaning or even the dimensions of reality. Then he walked out by way of the dais and the magistrate’s room, through the corridor and along it in search of the room that had been set aside for him.
*
By the time they drove into the siding at Premnagar it was nearly half-past ten. There was barely an hour before the night train from Mirat to Ranpur was due to stop and pick them up. The stationmaster was fussing because the coach had to be shunted to a more convenient place for coupling and he had expected them by ten o’clock.
A puncture had delayed them. For half-an-hour Kasim had waited on the roadside, listening to the wind in the telegraph wires. The night sky had no luminosity. The wind held the smell of approaching rain; a small rain; but better than a heavy rain in country like this which the wet monsoon either avoided or flooded, first drying the top-soil for a couple of years, then sweeping it away. He welcomed the rain and the darkness of the sky. The fort, unsilhouetted, had entirely disappeared. He welcomed the wind and the air. It was good to feel braced and chilled after the heat and humidity of the room in the Circuit House, but he knew he might catch cold. Instinctively he had felt in his pocket for the onion that was supposed to ward colds off. There was no onion. He had given that up when his wife died.