A Suitable Boy(430)

‘Yes, Sir,’ said the DSP, almost gratefully.

After the insults to the police, the DSP would fulfil his instructions with little regret.

He ordered the Inspectors, Sub-Inspectors and constables to teach the students a good lesson, and this they did with a vengeance. The lathi charge was savage and sudden. Several students were badly beaten. A certain amount of blood mixed with the previous night’s rain in the puddles, and stained the surface of the road. Many of the blows were severe. Some young men suffered broken bones: ribs, or legs, or arms which they had lifted in order to protect their heads from injury. The policemen pulled them off the road, sometimes by the feet, their heads bouncing or dragging along the road surface, towards the police vans. They were too incensed to use stretchers.

One boy lay in a van at the point of death, with an injury to the skull. He was the student from the medical college.





12.23


WHEN S.S. Sharma returned that afternoon he found a dangerous situation on his hands. What had begun as a protest march had now upset and unnerved the whole town. Regardless of their political affiliations, the students closed ranks against the brutality, some said criminality, of the police. A vigil began near the medical college, where (once the police realized how serious his injuries were) the student had been unloaded. Several thousand students sat outside the medical college, waiting for news of the boy’s health. Needless to say, there were no classes anywhere in the university that day, nor would there be for a while.

The Home Minister, fearing the worst if the boy died, advised the Chief Minister to call out the army, and if necessary to impose martial law. He himself had already imposed a police curfew, which was due to take effect that evening.

S.S. Sharma listened in silence. Then he said: ‘Agarwal, why is it that I cannot leave town for two days without you presenting me with some problem? If you are tired of your portfolio, I will give you something else.’

But L.N. Agarwal enjoyed the power that went along with being Home Minister, and he knew that it was not a portfolio that could be given to anyone else, especially now that it was an open secret that Mahesh Kapoor was about to announce his resignation from the Congress Party and the government. He said: ‘I have done my best. One cannot run a state by kindness.’

‘So you suggest calling out the army?’

‘I do, Sharmaji.’

S.S. Sharma looked tired. He said, ‘That will be good neither for the army nor for the people of Brahmpur. As for the students, it will inflame them as little else can.’ His head began to shake slightly. ‘I feel they are like my children. This is a wrong thing we have done.’

L.N. Agarwal smiled somewhat contemptuously at the Chief Minister’s sentimentality. But he was relieved to notice the collective ‘we’.

‘I believe, Sharmaji, that no matter what we do, the students will be inflamed when that student dies.’

‘When, you say, not if? There is no hope for him, then?’

‘I don’t believe so. But it is difficult to get at facts in this situation. It is true, people exaggerate. Still, it is best to be prepared.’ L.N. Agarwal’s tone was cold, and not defensive.

The Chief Minister sighed, then continued in his slightly nasal voice: ‘Because of this curfew, whatever happens to the student, we will have a problem this evening. What if the students do not disperse? Do you suggest we start firing at them?’

The Home Minister remained silent.

‘And when the boy dies, I tell you that the funeral will become uncontrollable. They will want to cremate him by the Ganga, probably near that other unfortunate pyre.’

The Home Minister refused to flinch at this needless reference. When one did one’s duty properly, one could face reproof without being inwardly shaken. He had no doubt that the Pul Mela Inquiry Commission, which had begun its sittings a week ago, would absolve him.

‘That will be impossible,’ he said. ‘They will have to do it at a ghat or somewhere else. The sands on this side of the river are already under water.’

S.S. Sharma was about to say something, then thought better of it. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, embattled though he was in his own party, had once again asked him to come to the centre to join his Cabinet. It was getting difficult to refuse. But now, with the imminent resignation of Mahesh Kapoor, Sharma’s departure would almost certainly result in L.N. Agarwal becoming Chief Minister. And Sharma felt that he could not in conscience hand his state over to this shrewd and rigid man who, for all his intelligence, lacked any human touch. Sharma in his philosophical moments felt like a father towards those in his protection. Sometimes this led to unnecessary conciliation or avoidable compromise, but he believed these were preferable to Agarwal’s alternative. Needless to say, a state could not be run on kindness alone. But he dreaded to think of one run on nothing but discipline and fear.