Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

Jagat Ram argued that since the brahmin stranglehold over the parts of the heroes had been broken in favour of the other upper castes, it was a logical next step to allow the so-called lower castes and scheduled castes to participate. They contributed to the success of the Ramlila as spectators and even to a small extent as contributors; why not then as actors? Kedarnath responded that it was obviously too late to do anything this year. He would bring up the matter with the Ramlila Committee the following year. But he suggested that the people of Ravidaspur, which was largely a scheduled caste community — and from which the claim largely emanated — should perform a Ramlila of their own as well, so that the demand would not be seen as invasive and mischievous, merely a way of prolonging by other weapons the conflict that had had its first culmination in the disastrous strike earlier in the year.

Nothing was really resolved. Everything was left in uncertainty. And Jagat Ram was not really surprised. This was his first venture into politics, and he had not enjoyed it. His childhood hell in a village, his brutal adolescence in a factory, and the vicious world of competitors and middlemen, poverty and dirt in which he now found himself had served to turn him into something of a philosopher. One did not argue with elephants in a jungle when they were on the rampage, one did not argue with the traffic in Chowk as it hurtled past in murderous confusion. One got out of the way and got one’s family out of the way. If possible, one retained what dignity one could. The world was a place of brutality and cruelty and the exclusion of people like him from the rites of religion was almost the least of its barbarities.

The previous year one of the jatavs of his own village, who had spent a couple of years in Brahmpur, had gone back home during the harvest season. After the comparative freedom of the city, he had made the mistake of imagining that he had gained exemption from the generalized loathing of the upper-caste villagers. Perhaps also, being eighteen years old, he had the rashness of youth; at any rate, he cycled around the village singing film songs on a bicycle he had bought from his earnings. One day, feeling thirsty, he had had the brazenness to ask an upper-caste woman who was cooking outside her house for some water to drink. That night he had been set upon by a gang of men, tied to his bicycle, and forced to eat human excreta. His brain and his bicycle had then been smashed to bits. Everyone knew the men who were responsible, yet no one had dared to testify; and the details had been too horrendous for even the newspapers to print.

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.

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.’