The police inspector then turns towards Badè Khan, who is now seen clearly in the lantern light, and shouts, ‘Bind this man!’ and when they are beginning to pull out ropes from their belts, there is noise in the street below, and there comes Rangè Gowda, Mada and a lantern with him, and when he sees the policemen, he says something to Mada, and Mada goes away, and before the cock has time to crow three times, there is Pariah Rachanna and Madanna and Lingayya and Lingayya’s woman, and they all gather at Rangamma’s door and cry out, ‘Hele! Hele! What are you doing with our master?’ and the policeman shouts, ‘He, shut up, you sons of my woman!’—’He, he, do you think we are going to be silent because of your beards and batons. ’—’If you are not silent, you will get a marriage greeting today!’—and Rachanna says, ‘Ah, I’ve seen your elders, you son of my concubine, and I shall see. ’—And at this the policeman grows so wild that he waves his lathi and Rachanna comes forward and says, ‘Hè, beat me if you have the courage!’ and Rangamma leans out of the veranda darkness into the starlight and says, ‘Hè, Rachanna, this must not be done!’ and Rachanna says, ‘And what is to be done, Mother? They are going to take away our master!’ And Rangè Gowda says something to Mada and Mada says something to Rachanna and Rachanna says something in the ear of everyone, and when Moorthy is seen on the threshold, the bright light of the police lantern falling on his knit face, Rachanna cries out, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and the policeman rushes at them and bangs them with his lathi and Rachanna quavers out the louder, ‘Gandhi Mahatma ki jai!’ and other policemen come and bang them too, and the women raise such a clamour and cry that the crows and bats set up an obsequial wail, and the sparrows join them from the roofs and eaves and the cattle rise up in the byre and the creaking of their bones is heard. And then men rush from this street and that street, and the police inspector seeing this hesitates before coming down, and Rachanna barks out again, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ And the police inspector shouts, ‘Arrest that swine!’ and when they come to arrest him, everybody gets round him and says, ‘No, we’ll not give him up.’ And the police inspector orders, ‘Give them a licking,’ and from this side and that there is the bang of the lathi and men shriek and women weep and the children begin to cry and groan, and more and more men go forward towards Moorthy, and more policemen beat them, and then Moorthy says something to the police inspector and the police inspector nods his head, and Moorthy comes along the veranda and says, ‘Brothers!’ and there is such a silence that the Kartik lights glow brighter. ‘Brothers, in the name of the Mahatma, let there be peace and love and order. As long as there is a God in heaven and purity in our hearts evil cannot touch us. We hide nothing. We hurt none. And if these gentlemen want to arrest us, let them. Give yourself up to them. That is the true spirit of the satyagrahi. The Mahatma’— here the police inspector drags him back brutally, but Moorthy continues—’The Mahatma has often gone to prison. ’—and the police inspector gets so angry at this, that he gives a slap on Moorthy’s face, but Moorthy stands firm and says nothing. Then suddenly Rachanna shouts out from below, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Come, brothers, come!’ and he rushes up the steps towards Moorthy, and suddenly, in sinister omen, all the Kartik lights seemed quenched, clay pots and candelabras and banana trunks and house after house became dark, and something so sinister kicked our backs that we all rush up behind Rachanna crying, ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’ and now the police catch Rachanna and the one behind him and the one behind the one who was behind him, and they spit on them and bind them with ropes, while at the other end of the courtyard is seen Rangamma, Badè Khan beside her. Then the police inspector thinks this is the right time to come down, for the lights were all out and the leaders all arrested, and as Moorthy is being dragged down the steps Rachanna’s wife and Madanna’s wife and Sampanna’s wife and Papamma and Sankamma and Veeramma come forward and cry out, ‘Oh, give us back our men and our master, our men and our master,’ but the police inspector says, ‘Give them a shoe-shower,’ and the policemen kick them in the back and on the head and in the stomach, and while Rachanna’s wife is crying, Madanna’s wife is squashed against a wall and her breasts squeezed. And Rangè Gowda, who has stood silent by the tamarind, when he sees this, rushes down and, stick in hand, gives one bang on the head of a policeman, and the policeman sinks down, and there is such a clamour again that the police inspector shouts, ‘Disperse the crowd!’ and he slips round the byre with Moorthy before him, while policemen beat the crowd this side and that side, and groans and moans and cries and coughs and oaths and bangs and kicks are heard, and more shouts of ‘Mahatma Gandhi ki jai! Mahatma Gandhi ki jai!’
And this time it was from the Brahmin quarter that the shouts came, and policemen rushed towards the Brahmins and beat them, and old Ramanna and Dorè came forward and said, ‘We too are Gandhi’s men, beat us as much as you like,’ and the policemen beat them till they were flat on the ground, mud in their mouths and mist in their eyes, and as the dawn was rising over the Kenchamma hill, faces could be seen, and men became silent and women became sobless, and with ropes round their arms seventeen men were marched through the streets to the Santur police station, by the Karwar road and round the Skeffington Coffee Estate and down the Tippur valley and up the Santur mound, and as the morning cattle were going out to the fields, and the women were adorning the thresholds for a Kartik morning, Brahmins and Pariahs and Potters and Weavers were marched into the police station — seventeen men of Kanthapura were named and locked behind the bars. And the policemen twisted their arms and beat them on their knuckles, and spat into their mouths, and when they had slapped and banged and kicked, they let them out one by one, one by one they let them out, and they all marched back to Kanthapura, all but Moorthy. Him they put into a morning bus, and with one policeman on the right and one policeman on the left they carried him away to Karwar. We wept and we prayed, and we vowed and we fasted, and maybe the gods would hear our feeble voices. Who would hear us, if not they?
The gods indeed did hear our feeble voices, for this advocate and that advocate came and said, ‘I shall defend him,’ vakils and advocates and barristers came and said, ‘And we shall plead for him,’ and the students formed a defence committee and raised a huge meeting, and copper and silver flowed into the collection plate, and merchants came and said, ‘And here we are when money is needed.’ And when Moorthy heard of all this, he said, ‘That is not for me. Between truth and me none shall come,’ and Advocate Ranganna went and saw him and said, ‘Moorthy! The Red-man’s judges, they are not your uncle’s grandsons,’ and Moorthy simply said, ‘If truth is one, all men are one before it,’ and Ranganna said, ‘Judges are not for truth, but for law, and the English are not for the brown skin but for the white, and the Government is not with the people but with the police.’ And Moorthy listened to all this and said, ‘If that is so, it will have to change. Truth will have to change it. I shall speak that which truth prompteth, and truth needeth no defence,’ and Ranganna spoke this of corruption and that about prejudice, but ‘truth, truth and truth’ was all that Moorthy said, and old Ranganna, who had grown grey with law on his tongue, got so wild that he banged the prison door behind him and muttered to himself, ‘To the mire with you!’