Vikram Seth - A Suitable Boy

A member: Or voice in our lungs.

The Hon’ble the Speaker: I would request members not to interrupt needlessly the speeches of other members.

Begum Abida Khan: But what is the use of my raising my voice for justice in a House where all we meet with is mockery and boorishness? We are called degenerates and wastrels but it is the sons of Ministers, believe me, who are the true proficients of dissipation. The class of people who preserved the culture, the music, the etiquette of this province is to be dispossessed, is to be driven through the lanes to beg its bread. But we will bear our vicissitudes with the dignity that is the inheritance of the aristocracy. This chamber may rubber-stamp this bill. The Upper Chamber may give it another cursory reading and rubber-stamp it. The President may sign it blindly. But the courts will vindicate us. As in our fellow-state of Bihar, this pernicious legislation will be struck down. And we will fight for justice, yes, before the bench and in the press and at the hustings — as long as there is breath in our bodies — and, yes, as long as there is voice in our lungs.

Shri Devakinandan Rai (Socialist Party): It has been very enlightening to be lectured to by the honourable member. I must confess that I see no likelihood of her begging for her bread through the lanes of Brahmpur. Perhaps for cake, but I doubt that too. If I had my way she would not beg for her bread, but she and those of her class would certainly have to work for it. This is what simple justice requires, and this is what is required also for the economic health of this province. I, and the members of the Socialist Party, agree with the honourable member who has just spoken that this bill is an election gimmick by the Congress Party and the government. But our belief is based on the grounds that this is a toothless bill, ineffectual and compromised. It does not go anywhere near what is needed for a thorough overhaul of agricultural relations in this province.

Compensation for the landlords! What? Compensation for the blood that they have already sucked from the limbs of a helpless and oppressed peasantry? Or compensation for their God-given right — I notice that the honourable member is in the habit of invoking God whenever His assistance is required to strengthen her weak arguments — their God-given right to continue to gorge themselves and their useless train of unemployed relations on the ghee of this state when the poor farmer, the poor tenant, the poor landless labourer, the poor worker can hardly afford half a sip of milk for his hungry children? Why is the treasury being depleted? Why are we writing ourselves and our children into debt with these promised bonds when this idle and vicious class of zamindars and taluqdars and landlords of all kinds should be summarily dispossessed — without any thought of compensation — of the lands that they are sitting on and have been sitting on for generations for the sole reason that they betrayed their country at the time of the Mutiny and were richly rewarded for their treason by the British? Is it just, Sir — is it reasonable that they should be awarded this compensation? The money that this government in its culpable so-called generosity is pouring into the laps of these hereditary oppressors should go into roads and schools, into housing for the landless and land reclamation, into clinics and agricultural research centres, not into the luxurious expenditure which is all that the aristocracy is accustomed to or capable of.

Mirza Amanat Hussain Khan (Democratic Party): I rise to a point of order, Sir. Is the honourable member to be permitted to wander off the subject and take up the time of the House with irrelevancies?

The Hon’ble the Speaker: I think he is not irrelevant. He is speaking on the general question of the relations between the tenants, the zamindars, and the government. That question is more or less before us and any remark which the honourable member now offers on that point is not irrelevant. You may like it or not, I may like it or not, but it is not out of order.

Shri Devakinandan Rai: I thank you, Sir. There stands the naked peasant in the hot sun, and here we sit in our cool debating rooms and discuss points of order and definitions of relevancy and make laws that leave him no better than before, that deprive him of hope, that take the part of the capitalist, oppressing, exploiting class. Why must the peasant pay for the land that is his by right, by right of effort, by right of pain, by right of nature, by right, if you will, of God? The only reason why we expect the peasant to pay this huge and unseemly purchase price to the treasury is in order to finance the landlord’s exorbitant compensation. End the compensation, and there will be no need for a purchase price. Refuse to accept the notion of a purchase price, and any compensation becomes financially impossible. I have been arguing this point since the inception of the bill two years ago, and throughout the second reading last week. But at this stage of the proceedings what can I do? It is too late. What can I do but say to the treasury benches: you have set up an unholy alliance with the landlords and you are attempting to break the spirit of our people. But we will see what happens when the people realize how they have been cheated. The General Elections will throw out this cowardly and compromised government and replace it with a government worthy of the name: one that springs from the people, that works for the people and gives no support to its class enemies.

The Nawab Sahib had entered the House during the earlier part of this last speech. He was sitting in the Visitors’ Gallery, although, had he wished to, he would have been welcome in the Governor’s Gallery. He had returned from Baitar the previous day in response to an urgent message from Brahmpur. He was shocked and embittered by what had happened and horrified that his daughter had had to face such a situation virtually on her own. His concern for her had been so much more patent than his pride in what she had done that Zainab had not been able to help smiling. For a long time he had hugged her and his two grandchildren with tears running down his cheeks. Hassan had been puzzled, but little Abbas had accepted this as a natural state of affairs and had enjoyed it all — he could tell that his grandfather was not at all unhappy to see them. Firoz had been white with anger, and it had taken all of Imtiaz’s good humour when he arrived late that afternoon, to calm the family down.

The Nawab Sahib was almost as angry with his hornet of a sister-in-law as with L.N. Agarwal. He knew that it was she who had brought this visitation upon their heads. Then, when the worst was over, she had made light of the police action and was almost cavalier in her assumption that Zainab would have handled things with such tactical courage. As for L.N. Agarwal, the Nawab Sahib looked down on to the floor of the House, and saw him talking very civilly with the Revenue Minister, who had wandered over to his desk and was conferring with him on some point, probably floor management with respect to the impending and critical vote later this afternoon.

The Nawab Sahib had not had the opportunity to talk to his friend Mahesh Kapoor since his return, nor to convey his heartfelt thanks to the Chief Minister. He thought that he would do so after today’s session in the Assembly was over. But another reason why he was present in the House today was that he realized — as did many others, for the press and public galleries were all crowded — that it was a historic occasion. For him, and for those like him, the impending vote was one that would — unless halted by the courts — spell a swift and precipitous decline.

Well, he thought fatalistically, it has to happen sooner or later. He was under no illusions that his class was a particularly meritorious one. Those who constituted it included not only a small number of decent men but also a large number of brutes and an even larger number of idiots. He remembered a petition that the Zamindars’ Association had submitted to the Governor twelve years ago: a good third of the signatories had used their thumb-prints.