The Setting Sun (28 page)

As the man translates, Phule puts a hand on my shoulder. ‘You’re right. He was doing his duty.’

The villagers murmur excitedly as the man beckons me onto the stone platform. When I stumble up, he turns me so we’re side-on to the audience, and takes my hands between his in a gesture of
namaste
.

‘There’s no reason for you to be upset,’ he soothes. ‘You are not your father. It was a long time ago. It’s good you have come.’

The villagers start clapping, as if the show’s over. But I’m overcome and stand there helplessly, fat, stupid tears trickling down my face.

‘Come, we will have tea now,’ the man says, leading me by one hand into the
chavadi
.

Indoors, there’s one further revelation. I ask the witness whether old women and old men were abused, as Shinde claimed. He looks startled before flatly denying it.

‘I would have seen. It was the six men, from the families sheltering the absconders.’

I feel part of the black burden slipping off my shoulders. ‘Were they caught afterwards?’

The man shrugs. ‘I don’t remember. I don’t think so. You
see, that night turned the villagers against the government. Chafal had been divided until then. Some had left to fight for the King-Emperor. Afterwards, everyone was for the Prati Sarkar.’

So Bill’s action was entirely counterproductive.

We spend about an hour in the
chavadi
, discussing what happened to Bill in later life and how Chafal’s changed over the last sixty years. Then Phule says it’s time to go; he’s needed at the station in an hour. I remove the garland as soon as we’ve said our farewells and got in the car. We’re both silent on the drive home. I’m physically spent. But my mind is seething. The afternoon’s provided vindication of Modak’s disquiet at the consequences of the methods used against the Parallel Government; yet it’s also offered a significant challenge to Shinde’s account, which rested, after all, on second-hand testimony. As Nirad Chaudhuri complains, nationalist historiography was prone to inflate its claims about imperial brutality. Those who were actually there have offered a rather different narrative to the Congress worker on whose account Shinde relies so heavily.

On the other hand, I’ve investigated first-hand only one of the incidents alluded to in the texts I’ve read. What if I went elsewhere? Then I wonder if I had any right to apologise on Bill’s behalf. What would he think of me doing so? Or did I let him off too lightly? How can I really understand the pressures he felt under at the time? Above all, however, I feel relief. He wasn’t like Paul Scott’s villainous Merrick, after all. He wasn’t guilty of mindless sadism; there was some kind of rationale in his behaviour that night, unacceptably harsh as it nonetheless seems to me. Retribution in kind for the abused women. And for the beatings of alleged collaborators described so graphically in Modak’s novel and elaborated on by Farrokh’s manager. But I still can’t understand why Bill descended to the level of his opponents. The rules are the rules, as he insisted all those years ago to François in Arusha: you can’t make them
up as you go along. From my perspective, sixty-four years on, it seems like a fatal error of judgement.

Back at the hotel, Phule asks me to have the concierge take a picture of us. ‘For my wife,’ he mutters.

At last the shades come off for a swift polish. His irises are the colour of melted butterscotch.

‘We are all sons to our fathers,’ he pronounces enigmatically. ‘I will not forget what you did today.’

I’m sure he would have put his arms around me if we knew each other a little better. I’m intensely grateful for the approval his comment seems to express, as well as for his support during my ordeal. Without it, I doubt I would have come out of the experience relatively unscathed.

Up in my room, I place the fast-withering garland on my bedside table. I’ve barely lain down when I fall fast asleep and dream about Bill again. I’m at a party somewhere in London which is heaving with people. I look up to see him coming into the room, face creased in an apologetic smile, as if he’s been held up in traffic. He looks as he did the year he died, hair immaculately groomed as usual, tanned, bursting with vitality. Except that he’s wearing his Indian Police uniform, his leathers neat and polished, just like in his wedding photos. I barge through the throng. As I reach him, I realise I’m now older than he is. Yet he recognises me at once. He grins hugely and we hug, slapping each other on the back. When he steps back, as if to register more precisely how I’ve changed, I’m suddenly enraged.

‘You didn’t tell us you were going, you’ve been away so long, we’ve been waiting for you all this time,’ I protest with childish rage.

He hugs me again. ‘It’s alright, old chap, I’m back now.’

Then he asks me question after question about what I’ve been doing with my life. He’s so helplessly hungry to know everything that I reserve my own questions. I’m just getting onto explaining about my trip to India, when someone else
comes into the room. He leaves the door open behind him. Impotently, I watch it swing to, knowing that when it slams I’ll wake up, before I’ve had my turn to ask anything. When it does bang to, I sit up to find myself in pitch darkness, eyes wet again.

CHAPTER 11

Terrorism, Old and New

Everywhere
Lonely Planet
recommends in Kolhapur is full, so after a trek round the night-time city by auto-rickshaw, I end up some distance from the centre at a place which describes itself as ‘modernly furnished’. I’m so tired after the visit to Chafal and the bus trip from Satara that I go straight to bed and sleep, deeply and blankly, for ten hours. After breakfast, however, I feel restored. At reception, I ask if they know of Shinde’s college. I’m soon dialling from my room.

‘Hello, I’d like to speak to Dr A.B. Shinde, please.’

There’s a silence before a flat female voice answers. ‘Shinde sahib is no more.’

‘Pardon?’

‘Shinde sahib died in May.’

Oh no.

‘What’s it about?’

‘I really wanted to get hold of a copy of his book on the Parallel Government,’ I stutter, ‘and talk to him about its sources. And I was hoping he could introduce me to a couple of people.’

‘I will tell the sahib’s son. He comes at two o’clock only. You may pass then.’

I’m completely thrown by this unexpected setback. Everything depends on Bhosle now. I proceed straight to the university. It’s a ten-minute taxi-ride to a spacious landscaped campus with an impressive main building in modern Saracenic style. There’s another enormous statue of Shivaji galloping his horse at the end of the semicircle of front lawn. I’m taken to the second floor and shown into the History department.

‘Professor Bhosle’s still in Kerala,’ the administrator tells me. ‘His wife’s unwell and she is having treatment there.’

That must be why he hasn’t responded to my emails. And why he abruptly changed his plans to be in Mumbai. Still, it’s hard to contain my disappointment at this second blow. ‘Do you have a number for him?’

‘You must ask the head.’

She leads me along the corridor and knocks at a door. Inside, seated at a long table surrounded by a dozen chairs, is a pleasant-looking individual in his sixties with gold-rimmed spectacles, an aquiline nose and a sheaf of pens in the pocket of his short-sleeved shirt. Opposite sits a younger man, handsome and very fair-skinned, in a fawn safari jacket. Both get up.

‘Professor Lohor, head of department,’ the older one says. ‘My colleague, Dr Avanish Patil.’

We shake hands and they pore over my visiting card.

‘I was hoping to see Professor Bhosle. I’ve come specially from London,’ I plead.

Lohor picks up his phone. His colleague and I appraise each other as the silence lengthens.

‘These Indian mobiles,’ Lohor eventually shrugs. ‘I will give you his number and you can try yourself.’

‘When are you expecting him back?’

‘That depends on his wife’s progress.’

I’m really downcast now, unable to see past this dead end. So I’m glad to be distracted by Dr Patil’s offer to show me round. Before we can get up, however, there’s a knock and half a dozen white-robed figures glide into the room. They’re led by a plump woman, grey hair in a bun, carrying a garish portrait of a youthful guru. My hosts now stand to perform a
namaste
and I follow suit. Once our visitors have reciprocated, they take their seats. I can’t follow the conversation, but there’s much gesturing from the woman and affirming grunts from her followers as they pass round pamphlets with
the guru’s photo on the front. At one point I hear the words ‘University of Texas’. Then they rise as one and after further salutations, glide back out of the room like Banquo’s ghosts. Have I dreamed it all? Lohor and Patil look unfazed, as if such interruptions are an everyday occurrence.

‘What was that about Texas?’ I ask as I follow Avanish outside.

‘They said Texas University has provided an affidavit that their saint is “of most stable and solid mind”. They want an attestation from us for the courses they run in the “science of positive thinking”.’

The deadpan expression gives way to a gurgling laugh. I warm to him.

‘So you’re researching the nationalist movements of Maharashtra?’ he asks, once he’s shown me into his own office, a dark cell with a handful of dog-eared books on one shelf and a desk piled high with student papers.

‘Yes. I’d been relying on Professor Bhosle for information about archives in Mumbai relating to the Parallel Government.’

Avanish’s brow puckers. ‘Indeed, he’s writing a book on it at present. It’s thirty years now since he began this work in his PhD.’

My ears prick up. ‘Would that be in the library?’ It might give me some leads.

‘Of course. Should I take you?’

He leads me out of the department and down some flaking concrete steps to the basement of an adjoining building. The holdings seem small for an institution this size. Avanish helps me complete formalities with the chief librarian, a smiling woman in a plum sari who rubs her stomach solicitously.

‘We’ll have lunch afterwards,’ Avanish suggests. ‘Have you tried our famous Kolhapur mutton curry?’

Bhosle’s thesis is soon delivered. Submitted in 1978, it’s entitled ‘A History of the Freedom Movement in Satara District from 1885–1947’. I skip through to the decade I’m
interested in. There are several references to ‘police excesses’, including instances of firing on demonstrators. But look, they’re all in before Bill arrived. The most controversial incident involved Hobson’s predecessor, CMS Yates, producing several fatalities at a village called Vaduj. Indeed, there’s only one mention of Bill that I can see. But it’s disturbing enough: ‘When Mr Gilbert, the Additional DSP rightly understood the threat caused by the criminals to law and order, he undertook to wipe out the existence of the criminal gangs. He shot one Mahadu Ramoshi at Kameri and arrested many of the criminals.’ Criminal gangs, according to Bhosle, not the PG or their supporters. Still, it’s a shock. What’s a Ramoshi? Was the shooting fatal? There’s no source for the incident in the bibliography. Hearsay or interviews with eyewitnesses? Frustrating. At this point, it seems Bhosle had done little of the archival work in which he’s currently engaged. Most disappointingly, there’s no mention of the weekly confidential reports I want.

Although doubting my chances of meeting Lad and Nayakwadi now, I keep an eye out for references to them. While Y.B Chavan and Nana Patil were the ‘dictators of the movement’, the two I’m after were on the executive. As D.Y. indicated, Lad was the ‘field marshal’ of the
tufan sena
, the armed wing of the Parallel Government, and Nayakwadi ‘became increasingly convinced … that military strength was necessary to win freedom’. Evidence of the movement’s violence against civilians is hard to evaluate. At times, ironically, the PG is allied with the police in a common war against ‘antisocial elements’. Thus three Mangs of ‘low character’ have legs amputated by PG activists for crimes of theft and arson. I remember Farrokh’s acid comments about the karmic justice of Nana Patil’s unsuccessful leg operation in later life.

On the other hand, Bhosle denies claims about the shoeing of collaborators: ‘Laxmanshastri Joshi commented that in Satara-Sangli regions the underground workers tortured the
pro-government persons by shoeing them like bulls and horses. But the statement has no foundation whatsoever.’ Indeed, the thesis concludes that ‘nowhere under the sun traitors were more leniently treated [sic]’. There’s one final detail, which I wish I’d known when I went to Chafal. The principal agitator there was called Ramanand Bharati, who raised the Indian flag from Ajinkya Tara fort in Satara on Independence Day in 1947. Was this the man Bill was after, on that December night sixty-four years ago?

I’ve finished by the time Avanish arrives to take me for lunch. We sit at one of the open-air stalls set up along the drive to the main building.

‘This place makes it same as my grandmother.’

The mutton curry certainly smells delicious, but the first mouthful feels like an iron’s been passed over my tongue. I suspect it might even have floored Bill. Avanish watches anxiously and I’m afraid I’ve spoiled the occasion. But to my surprise, the scalding shock soon wears off and I begin to appreciate the exquisitely subtle flavours. I’ve never heard of some of the spices.

‘You always drink lager with curry in London, no?’

‘Yes, Avanish, at least ten pints and always in places with flock wallpaper.’

It takes him a moment to realise I’m joking. We compare our experience as academics. Avanish makes me feel decadent, with his sixteen hours of lectures every week and classes of 50 to 100, each student writing two essays per term.

‘How do you get through all the the marking?’ I ask sympathetically.

He shrugs ruefully. ‘We only have two months off a year for holiday and research. No sabbaticals.’

I commiserate.

‘Ah, it’s difficult to be a historian here. Especially regional history. If you write in your own language you have no national audience. But there’s no national audience for local
history. It’s very hard to get published. You need subventions from a patron. And that brings its own pressures.’