Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Mahesh Kapoor frowned: ‘What on earth are you quoting from?’ he asked.

‘From a translation of your Mahabharata, Minister Sahib.’

‘Well, I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Mahesh Kapoor, annoyed. ‘I get enough of it at home without you — of all people — joining in.’

‘I was only making the point, Minister Sahib, that it is the conservatives, and not our liberal Prime Minister, despite his great victory, who are still in control. Or so I think.’

Abdus Salaam did not sound unduly distressed by what doubtless must have distressed him a good deal. If anything, he sounded light-hearted, as if the pleasure of expounding the logic of his scenario sufficiently counterpoised the grimness of the scenario itself.

And, Mahesh Kapoor reflected, marvelling a little at the young man’s attitude, things were, if looked at clearly, quite grim. Less than a week after Nehru had defeated Tandon — one of the two crucial resolutions for which had been sponsored by a party boss from West Bengal — the Congress Executive Committee and Election Committee from the state of West Bengal had with miraculous haste begun to deal with the applications for the nomination of candidates. Their purpose was clear: to forestall the effects of any change from the top, and to present the Centre with a fait accompli — a slate of candidates for the General Elections prepared and in place before any possible secessionists could return to the Congress fold and make a bid for candidature. The state Congress bosses had had to be restrained from carrying out their designs by the Calcutta High Court.

In Purva Pradesh too, the State Election Committee of the Congress had been elected with astonishing speed. Under the Congress constitution this had to consist of the President of the State Congress Committee and not more than eight nor less than four other members. If such haste had really been necessary in order to cope with urgent preliminary work, the entrenched powers could have contented themselves with electing a minimum of four members. But by electing all eight and not leaving a single spot vacant for anyone who might later return to the Congress, they had made it clear that, whatever they said in public in deference to Nehru’s wishes, they were not serious about wishing the seceders to come back. For it was only through the activities of the Election Committee that Congressmen belonging to various groups could hope to get their due share of candidates — and through them their share of privilege and power.

Mahesh Kapoor could see all this, but he still had faith — or perhaps hope would describe his feeling better — that Nehru would ensure that those who were ideologically close to him would not find themselves displaced and marginalized in the states. This was what he now suggested to Abdus Salaam. Since Nehru faced no one who could pose the least threat to himself in the party, he would surely ensure that the legislatures of the nation would not be filled for the next five years by those who paid no more than lip service to his ideals.

Abdus Salaam stirred his tea, then murmured, ‘Well, from what you have said I can see you are veering towards rejoining the Congress, Minister Sahib.’

Mahesh Kapoor shrugged his shoulders. ‘Tell me,’ he said, ‘why are you so dubious about it? How can you be so sure he won’t gain — or regain — a grip on things? He turned the whole party around and seized the reins when no one expected it of him. He may surprise us further.’

‘I was at the All-India Congress Committee meeting in Delhi, as you know,’ said Abdus Salaam casually, focusing on a spot in the middle distance. ‘I saw him seizing the reins at close range. Well, it was quite a sight — do you want a first-hand account?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, Minister Sahib, it was the second day. There we were, all of us, in the Constitution Club. Nehru had been elected President the previous day — but of course he had not actually accepted. He said he wanted to sleep over the matter. He asked us to sleep over the matter. Everyone slept over the matter, and the next afternoon we waited for him to speak. He had not accepted, of course, but he was in the chair. Tandon was among the leaders on the dais, but Nehru was in the chair. The previous day he had refused the chair, but today, well, today, perhaps he thought that such extreme delicacy might be misinterpreted. Or perhaps Tandon had put his foot down and refused to sit where he so clearly was not wanted.’

‘Tandon,’ admitted Mahesh Kapoor, ‘was one of the few who refused to go along with the decision to divide the country when the Congress Party voted for Partition. No one says he’s not a man of principle.’

‘Well,’ said Abdus Salaam in passing, ‘Pakistan was a good thing.’

Seeing Mahesh Kapoor look shocked, he said: ‘For one thing, with the Muslim League wielding so much power in an undivided India neither could you have got rid of princely states like Marh nor forced through the abolition of zamindari. Everyone knows this, yet no one says so. But all this is water under the bridge, history, spilt milk. So there we were, Minister Sahib, looking reverently upwards at the dais, expecting the conqueror to tell us that he would take no nonsense from anybody, that he would make sure that the party apparatus responded to his slightest touch, that the candidates for the elections would all be his men.’

‘And women.’

‘Yes. And women. Panditji is keen on female representation.’

‘Go on, go on, Abdus Salaam, get to the point.’

‘Well, instead of getting a commander’s battle cry or even a pragmatist’s plan, we got a speech about the Unity of the Heart. We should think above divisions, splits, cliques! We must pull along like a team, a family, a battalion. Dear Chacha Nehru, I felt like saying, this is India, Hindustan, Bharat, the country where faction was invented before the zero. If even the heart is divided into four parts can you expect us Indians to divide ourselves into less than four hundred?’

‘But what did he say about candidates?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor.

Abdus Salaam’s answer was not reassuring.

‘What would he say, being Jawaharlal? That he just did not know and did not care who belonged to which group. That he entirely agreed with Tandonji that the right way to choose a candidate was to choose a man who did not apply for the slot. Of course, he could see that this might not always be possible in practice. And when he said this, Agarwal, who was sitting near me, visibly relaxed — he relaxed and he smiled. I can tell you, Minister Sahib, I did not feel very reassured by the nature of that smile.’

Mahesh Kapoor nodded and said, ‘And then Panditji agreed to accept the Presidency?’

‘Not quite,’ said Abdus Salaam. ‘But he said he had thought about it. Luckily for us, he had been able to obtain some sleep that night. He confided in us that the previous day, when his name had been put up and accepted at once, he did not quite know what to do. Those were his words: “I did not quite know what to do.” But now, having slept over it, he told us that he realized that it was not an easy matter for him to escape from this responsibility. Not an easy matter at all.’

‘So all of you breathed a sigh of relief.’

‘That, Minister Sahib, is correct. But we had breathed too early. A niggling doubt had struck him. A minor doubt, but one that niggled. He had slept, and made up his mind. Or almost, yes, almost made up his mind. But the question was: had we slept and made up our minds again — or at least not changed our minds? And if we had, how could we show him that we meant it? And how could we make him believe it?’

‘Well, what did you do?’ asked Mahesh Kapoor rather shortly. He found Abdus Salaam’s mode of narration far too leisurely for his tastes.