Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

‘I’m afraid that isn’t clear. This magistrate for some reason is after your blood, and is out to — well, to do you grievous hurt.’

The magistrate, however, was not interested in Maan’s blood but merely in upholding the law. He would not be a party to the subversion of justice by influential people, and that is what he suspected this to be. He knew of courts where this might be possible, but his was not one of them.

‘No person shall vote at any election if he is confined in a prison, whether under a sentence of imprisonment or transportation or otherwise, or is in the lawful custody of the police.’

The Representation of the People Act, 1951, was quite unambiguous about this, and so it happened that Maan was not able to vote in the great General Elections for which he had fought so hard. He was registered in Pasand Bagh, and elections for the Brahmpur (East) constituency for the Legislative Assembly were held on the 21st of January.

Curiously enough, had he been a resident of Salimpur-cum-Baitar, he would have succeeded in voting; for, owing to a shortage of trained personnel, voting in different constituencies was staggered, and the Legislative Assembly elections there were held on the 30th of January.

The fight now was an extremely harsh one. Waris was as bitter a rival to Mahesh Kapoor as he had been a doughty supporter. Everything had changed; and the Zamindari Act, rumours and scandals, pro- and anti-Congress feeling, religion, nothing was left unexploited in the mauling battle that led up to the polls.

The Nawab Sahib had not stated as such that Waris should fight against Mahesh Kapoor, but it was clear that he did not want him to support him. And Waris, who saw Maan no longer as the saviour but as the attempted murderer of the young Nawabzada, was passionate in his denunciation of him and his father, his clan, his religion, and his party. When the local Congress office belatedly sent a large number of posters and flags to Baitar Fort, he made a bonfire of them.

Waris spoke powerfully because he was so aroused. Already well liked in the area, he now rose on a great wave of popularity. He was the Nawab Sahib’s champion, and the champion of his injured son, who even now (so it was convenient to assert) lay at the point of death owing to the treachery of his seeming friend. The Nawab Sahib had to remain in Brahmpur, claimed Waris, but if he could have campaigned, he would have exhorted the people from every podium in the district to throw the betrayer of the salt of his hospitality, the vile Mahesh Kapoor and all he stood for out of the constituency into which he had so recently crawled.

And what did Mahesh Kapoor and the Congress stand for? continued Waris, who had begun to enjoy his role as a political and feudal leader. What had they given the people? The Nawab Sahib and his family had worked for the people for generations, had fought the British in the Mutiny — long before the Congress had even been conceived — had died heroically, had suffered with the people’s sufferings, had taken pity on their poverty, had helped them in every way they could. Look at the power station, the hospital, the schools founded by the Nawab Sahib’s father and grandfather, said Waris. Look at the religious trusts they had either established or contributed to. Think of the great processions at Moharram — the grand climax of the festivities of the Baitar year — which the Nawab Sahib paid for out of his own pocket as an act of public piety and private charity. And yet Nehru and his ilk were trying to destroy the man who was so well-beloved, and replace him with what? A voracious pack of petty government officials who would eat the very vitals of the people. To those who complained that the zamindars exploited the people he suggested that they compare the state of the peasants on the Baitar estate with those of a certain village just outside, where they were sunk in destitution which aroused not pity so much as horror. There the peasants — especially the landless chamars — were so poor that they sifted the bullocks’ droppings on the threshing-floor for residual grain — and washed it and dried it and ate it. And yet many chamars were going to vote blindly for the Congress, the party of the government that had oppressed them for so long. He begged his scheduled caste brothers to see the light and to vote for the bicycle they might aspire to and not for the pair of bullocks, which should only remind them of the degrading scenes they knew so well.

Mahesh Kapoor found himself entirely on the defensive. In any case, his heart lay in Brahmpur now: in a prison cell, in a hospital ward, in the room in Prem Nivas where his wife no longer slept. Increasingly, the fight, which had begun as an irregular ten-pointed star with one huge gleaming point, his own, had polarized into a struggle between two men: the man who tried to project himself as the Nawab Sahib’s candidate and the man who realized that his only chance of victory lay in suppressing his individuality and projecting himself as the candidate of Jawaharlal Nehru.

He talked not about himself now but about the Congress Party. But he was heckled at every meeting and asked to explain the actions of his son. Was it true that he had used his influence to try to get him off? What if the young Nawabzada died? Was this a plot to wipe out the leaders of the Muslims one by one? For one who had spent his life fighting for communal amity, such accusations were hard to bear. If he had not been sick at heart, he would have responded as furiously as he usually did in the presence of aggressive stupidity, and this would have done him less good still.

Not once, either by studied implication or in a fit of anger, did he mention the rumours gathering around the Nawab Sahib. Yet now these rumours too began to float around Salimpur and Baitar and the hinterland of the two small towns. They were more damaging morally than those that touched Mahesh Kapoor, even though what they imputed was two decades old; and the Hindu communalist parties tried to use them as well as they could.

But many people, particularly around Baitar, refused to believe these rumours of illegitimacy and rape. And some, who believed them, held that the Nawab Sahib had been punished enough by God through his grief for his son; and that charity suggested that there was a statute of limitations on one’s sins.

In practical terms too, Mahesh Kapoor was at his wits’ end. He no longer had two jeeps but only one broken-down vehicle provided by the Congress office. His son was no longer with him to provide him with help and support and introductions. His wife, who could have helped him, who could have talked to the shy women of the constituency, was dead. He had hoped at one stage that Jawaharlal Nehru might make time on his whirlwind tour of Purva Pradesh to visit Salimpur, but so certain had his election appeared that he had not pressed his case. And now it seemed that only a visit from Nehru could save him. He telegrammed Delhi and Brahmpur and asked that Nehru’s great progress be diverted his way for just a few hours; but he knew that half the Congress candidates in the province were making similar pleas, and that his chances of persuasion were utterly remote.

Veena and Kedarnath came out to help for a few days. Veena felt that her father needed her more than Maan, whom at best she could visit for a few minutes every other day. Her arrival had some effect in the towns, especially in Salimpur. Her homely but lively face, her warm-hearted manner, and the dignity of her sorrow — for her mother, for her brother, for her beleaguered father — affected the hearts of many women. When she spoke, they even attended public meetings. Because of the expansion of the franchise, they now formed half the electorate.

The Congress village-level workers campaigned as hard as they could, but many of them had begun to feel that the tide had turned irreversibly against them, and they were not able to disguise how disheartened they were. They could not even be certain of the scheduled caste vote because the socialists were trumpeting their electoral alliance with Dr Ambedkar’s party.