A Suitable Boy(131)

When, after repeated thumps of the Speaker’s gavel, a semblance of order was restored, the Home Minister, though still in shock, rose to ask: ‘May I know, Sir, whether a Parliamentary Secretary to a Minister is authorized to put questions to Government?’

Abdus Salaam, looking around in bewilderment, amazed by the furore he had unwittingly caused, said: ‘I withdraw.’

But now there were cries of: ‘No, no!’, ‘How can you do that?’ and ‘If you won’t ask it, I will’.

The Speaker sighed.

‘As far as procedure is concerned, every member is at liberty to put questions,’ he ruled.

‘Why then?’ asked a member angrily. ‘Why was it done? Will the honourable Minister answer or not?’

‘I did not catch the question,’ said L.N. Agarwal. ‘I believe it has been withdrawn.’

‘I am asking, like the other member, why no one found out what the crowd wanted? How did the DM know it was violent?’ repeated the member.

‘There should be an adjournment motion on this,’ cried another.

‘The Speaker already has such a notice with him,’ said a third.

Over all this rose the piercing voice of Begum Abida Khan: ‘It was as brutal as the violence of Partition. A youth was killed who was not even part of the demonstration. Would the honourable Minister for Home Affairs care to explain how this happened?’ She sat down and glared.

‘Demonstration?’ said L.N. Agarwal with an air of forensic triumph.

‘Crowd, rather –’ said the battling Begum, leaping up again and slipping out of his coils. ‘You are not going to deny, surely, that it was the time of prayer? The demonstration – the demonstration of gross inhumanity, for that is what it was – was on the part of the police. Now will the honourable Minister not take refuge in semantics and deal with the facts.’

When he saw the wretched woman get up again, the Home Minister felt a stab of hatred in his heart. She was a thorn in his flesh and had insulted and humiliated him before the House and he now decided that, come what may, he was going to get back at her and her house – the family of the Nawab Sahib of Baitar. They were all fanatics, these Muslims, who appeared not to realize they were here in this country on sufferance. A calm dose of well-applied law would do them good.

‘I can only answer one question at a time,’ L.N. Agarwal said in a dangerous growl.

‘The supplementary questions of the honourable member who asked the starred questions will take precedence,’ said the Speaker.

Begum Abida Khan smiled grimly.

The Home Minister said: ‘We must wait till the report is published. Government is not aware that an innocent youth was fired upon, let alone injured or killed.’

Now Abdus Salaam stood up again. From around the House outraged cries rose: ‘Sit down, sit down.’, ‘Shame!’, ‘Why are you attacking your own side?’.

‘Why should he sit down?’

‘What have you got to hide?’

‘You are a Congress member – you should know better’.

But so unprecedented was the situation that even those who opposed his intervention were curious.

When the cries had died down to a sort of volatile muttering, Abdus Salaam, still looking rather puzzled, asked: ‘What I have been wondering about during the course of this discussion is, well, why was a deterrent police force – well, maybe just an adequate police force – not maintained at the site of the temple? Then there would have been no need to fire in this panicky manner.’

The Home Minister drew in his breath. Everyone is looking at me, he thought. I must control my expression.

‘Is this supplementary question addressed to the honourable Minister?’ asked the Speaker.

‘Yes, it is, Sir,’ said Abdus Salaam, suddenly determined. ‘I will not withdraw this question. Would the honourable Minister inform us why there was not a sufficient and deterrent police force maintained either at the kotwali or at the site of the temple itself? Why were there only a dozen men left to maintain law and order in this grievously disturbed area, especially after the contents of the Friday sermon at the Alamgiri Mosque became known to the authorities?’

This was the question that L.N. Agarwal had been dreading, and he was appalled and enraged that it had been asked by an MLA from his own party, and a Parliamentary Secretary at that. He felt defenceless. Was this a plot by Mahesh Kapoor to undermine him? He looked at the Chief Minister, who was waiting for his response with an unreadable expression. L.N. Agarwal suddenly realized that he had been on his feet for a long time, and wanted very badly to urinate. And he wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible. He began to take refuge in the kind of stonewalling that the Chief Minister himself often used, but to much shabbier effect than that master of parliamentary evasion. By now, however, he hardly cared. He was convinced that this was indeed a plot by Muslims and socalled secular Hindus to attack him – and that his own party had been infected with treason.