Mahesh Kapoor knew nothing of these circumstances, for neither party had wanted them known, and he had been astonished to hear of the Chief Minister’s swift and unambiguous response. It made him feel even more strongly how ineffectual he himself had been. And when, after the passage of the Zamindari Bill in the Assembly, he had caught the Nawab Sahib’s eye. something had held him back from going up to his friend – in order to commiserate, explain and apologize. Was it shame about his inaction – or simply the obvious immediate discomfort at the fact that the bill that he had just successfully steered through the House would, though there was no animus in it, injure the Nawab Sahib’s interests as surely as the police action of the Home Minister?
Now still more time had passed, and the matter continued to prey on his mind. I must visit Baitar House this evening, said Mahesh Kapoor to himself. I cannot keep putting it off.
6.12
BUT meanwhile, this morning, there was work that needed to be done. A large number of people both from his constituency in Old Brahmpur and from elsewhere had gathered on the verandahs of Prem Nivas. Some of them were even milling around in the courtyard and wandering out into the garden. Mahesh Kapoor’s personal secretary and personal assistants were doing what they could to control the crowd and regulate the flow of visitors into the small office that the Minister of Revenue maintained at home.
Mahesh Kapoor sat at a table in the corner of the office. The two narrow benches that ran along the walls were occupied by a variety of people: farmers, traders, minor politicians, suppliants of one kind or another. An old man, a teacher, sat on the chair that faced Mahesh Kapoor across the table. He was younger, but looked older than the Minister. He had been worn out by a lifetime of care. He was an old freedom fighter, who had spent many years in jail under the British, and had seen his family reduced to poverty. He had obtained a B.A. in 1911, and with a qualification like that in those days he might well have gone on to retire at the very highest levels of Government. But in the later Twenties he had left everything to follow Gandhiji, and this idealistic impulse had cost him dearly. When he was in jail, his wife, with no one to support her, had died of tuberculosis, and his children, reduced to eating other people’s scraps, had suffered nearly fatal starvation. With the coming of Independence he had hoped that his sacrifice would result in an order of things closer to the ideals he had fought for, but he had been bitterly disappointed. He saw the corruption that had begun to eat into the rationing system and the system of government contracts with a rapacity that surpassed anything he had known under the British. The police too had become more overt in their extortions. What was worse was that the local politicians, the members of the local Congress Committees, were often hand in glove with the corrupt petty officials.
But when the old man had gone to the Chief Minister, S.S. Sharma, on behalf of the people of his neighbourhood, to ask him to take action against specific politicians, that great figure had merely smiled tiredly and said to him: ‘Masterji, your work, that of the teacher, is a sacred occupation. Politics is like the coal trade. How can you blame people if their hands and faces become a little black?’
The old man was now talking to Mahesh Kapoor, trying to persuade him that the Congress Party had become as shamefully vested in its interests and as shamefully oppressive in its rule as the British had ever been.
‘What you, of all people, are doing in this party, Kapoor Sahib, I don’t know,’ he said in Hindi that had more of an Allahabad than a Brahmpur accent. ‘You should have left it long ago.’
The old man knew that everyone in the room could hear what he was saying but he did not care.
Mahesh Kapoor looked at him directly and said: ‘Masterji, the times of Gandhiji have gone. I have seen him at his zenith, and I have seen him lose his hold so completely that he was not able to prevent the Partition of this country. He, however, was wise enough to see that his power and his inspiration were not absolute. He once said that it was not he but the situation that held the magic.’
The old man said nothing for a few seconds. Then, his mouth working slightly at the edges, he said: ‘Minister Sahib, what are you saying to me?’
The change in his mode of address was not lost on Mahesh Kapoor, and he felt slightly ashamed at his own evasion. ‘Masterji,’ he went on, ‘I may have suffered in the old days, but I have not suffered as you have. It is not that I am not disenchanted with what I see around me. I just fear that I will be of less use outside the party than in it.’
The old man, half to himself, said: ‘Gandhiji was right when he foresaw what would happen if the Congress Party continued after Independence as the party of Government. That is why he said that it should be disbanded and its members should dedicate themselves to social work.’