In the villages, the untouchables were virtually helpless; almost none of them owned that eventual guarantor of dignity and status, land. Few worked it as tenants, and of those tenants fewer still would be able to make use of the paper guarantees of the forthcoming land reforms. In the cities too they were the dregs of society. Even Gandhi, for all his reforming concern, for all his hatred of the concept that any human being was intrinsically so loathsome and polluting as to be untouchable, had believed that people should continue in their hereditarily ordained professions: a cobbler should remain a cobbler, a sweeper a sweeper. ‘One born a scavenger must earn his livelihood by being a scavenger, and then do whatever else he likes. For a scavenger is as worthy of his hire as a lawyer or your President. That, according to me, is Hinduism.’
For Jagat Ram, though he would not have said this aloud, this was the most misleading condescension. He knew that there was nothing innately worthy about cleaning lavatories or standing in a foul-smelling tanning pit — and being duty-bound to do so because your parents had. But this was what most Hindus believed, and if beliefs and laws were changing, a few more generations would continue to be crushed under the wheels of the great chariot before it finally ground to a bloodstained halt.
It was with only half a heart that Jagat Ram had argued that the scheduled castes should be allowed to be swaroops in the Ramlila. Perhaps, after all, it was not a question of a logical next step so much as an emotional one. Perhaps, as Nehru’s Law Minister Dr Ambedkar, the great, already almost mythical, leader of the untouchables, had asserted, Hinduism had nothing to offer those whom it had cast so pitilessly out of its fold. He had been born a Hindu, Dr Ambedkar had said, but he would not die a Hindu.
Nine months after the murder of Gandhi, the constitutional provision abolishing untouchability was passed by the Constituent Assembly, and its members broke out into loud cheers of ‘Victory to Mahatma Gandhi’. However little the measure was to mean in practical as opposed to symbolic terms, Jagat Ram believed that the victory for its formulation lay less with Mahatma Gandhi, who rarely concerned himself with such legalisms, than with quite another — and equally courageous — man.
15.6
On the 2nd of October, which happened to be Gandhiji’s birthday, the Kapoor family met at Prem Nivas for lunch. A couple of other guests had dropped in and were invited to join them. One was Sandeep Lahiri, who had come to ask after Maan. The other was a politician from U.P., one of the secessionists from the Congress, who had rejoined, and was attempting to persuade Mahesh Kapoor to do the same.
Maan arrived late. It was a public holiday, and he had spent the morning at the Riding Club playing polo with his friend. He was getting to be quite good at it. He hoped to spend the evening with Saeeda Bai. After all, the Moharram moon had not yet been sighted.
The first thing he did when he saw everyone gathered together was to praise Lata’s acting. Lata, feeling herself suddenly the centre of attention, blushed.
‘Don’t blush,’ said Maan. ‘No, blush away. I’m not flattering you. You were excellent. Bhaskar, of course, didn’t enjoy the play, but that wasn’t your fault. I thought it was wonderful. And Malati — she was brilliant too. And the Duke. And Malvolio. And Sir Toby of course.’
Maan had spread his praise too liberally by now for it to make Lata uncomfortable. She laughed and said:
‘You’ve left out the third footman.’
‘Quite right,’ said Maan. ‘And the fourth murderer.’
‘Why haven’t you come to the Ramlila, Maan Maama?’ asked Bhaskar.
‘Because it just began yesterday!’ said Maan.
‘But you’ve already missed Rama’s youth and training,’ said Bhaskar.
‘Oh, oh, sorry,’ said Maan.
‘You must come tonight, or I’ll be kutti with you.’
‘You can’t be kutti with your uncle,’ said Maan.
‘Yes, I can,’ said Bhaskar. ‘Today is the winning of Sita. The procession will go all the way from Khirkiwalan to Shahi Darvaza. And everyone will be out in the lanes celebrating.’
‘Yes, Maan, do — we’ll look forward to it,’ said Kedarnath. ‘And then have dinner with us afterwards.’
‘Well, tonight, I—’ Maan stopped, sensing that his father’s eyes were upon him. ‘I’ll come when the monkeys first appear in the Ramlila,’ he finished lamely, patting Bhaskar on the head. Bhaskar, he decided, was more monkey than frog.
‘Let me hold Uma,’ said Mrs Mahesh Kapoor, sensing that Savita was tired. She looked at the baby, trying to work out for the thousandth time which features belonged to her, which to her husband, which to Mrs Rupa Mehra and which to the photograph so often pulled out these days for reference, comparison or display from Mrs Rupa Mehra’s bag.
Her own husband, meanwhile, was saying to Sandeep Lahiri: ‘I understand you got into trouble this time last year over some pictures of Gandhiji?’
‘Er, yes,’ said Sandeep. ‘One picture, actually. But, well, things have sorted themselves out.’
‘Sorted themselves out? Hasn’t Jha just managed to get rid of you?’
‘Well, I’ve been promoted—’
‘Yes, yes, that’s what I meant,’ said Mahesh Kapoor impatiently. ‘But you’re very popular with everyone in Rudhia. If you weren’t in the IAS, I’d have made you my agent. I’d win the elections easily.’
‘Are you thinking of standing from Rudhia?’ asked Sandeep.
‘I’m not thinking of anything at the moment,’ said Mahesh Kapoor. ‘Everyone else is doing my thinking for me. My son. And my grandson. And my friend the Nawab Sahib. And my Parliamentary Secretary. And Rafi Sahib. And the Chief Minister. And this most helpful gentleman,’ he added, indicating the politician, a short, quiet man who had shared a cell with Mahesh Kapoor many years ago.
‘I am only saying: We should all return to the party of Gandhiji,’ said the politician. ‘To change one’s party is not necessarily to change one’s principles — or to be unprincipled.’
‘Ah, Gandhiji,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, not willing to be drawn out. ‘He would have been eighty-two today, and a miserable man. He would never have reiterated his wish to live to be a hundred and twenty-five. As for his spirit, we feed it with laddus for one day of the year, and once we’ve performed his shraadh we forget all about him.’
Suddenly he turned to his wife: ‘Why is he taking so long making the phulkas? Must we sit here with our stomachs rumbling till four o’clock? Instead of dandling that baby and making it howl, why don’t you get that halfwit cook to feed us?’
Veena said, ‘I’ll go,’ to her mother and went towards the kitchen.
Mrs Mahesh Kapoor once more bowed her head over the baby. She believed that Gandhiji was a saint, more than a saint, a martyr — and she could not bear that anything should be said about him in bitterness. Even now she loved to sing — or to hear sung — the songs from the anthology used in his Ashram. She had just bought three postcards issued by the Posts and Telegraph Department in his memory: one showed him spinning, one showed him with his wife Kasturba, one showed him with a child.
But what her husband said was probably true. Thrust to the sidelines of power at the end of his active life, his message of generosity and reconciliation, it seemed, had been almost forgotten within four years of his death. She felt, however, that he would still have wanted to live. He had lived through times of desperate frustration before, and had borne it with patience. He was a good man, and a man without fear. Surely his fearlessness would have extended into the future.